The Enid News and Eagle, Enid, OK

Northwest Oklahoma 1

Related Photos

  • Tim Starkey, executive director of Great Salt Plains Health Center in Cherokee, stands in the former Alfalfa County hospital in Cherokee.

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  • Great Salt Plains Health Center is renovating the former Alfalfa County hospital in Cherokee and expanding its services.

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Discussion

March 6, 2010

Healthy boost to the economy

Great Salt Plains Health Center remodels former hospital, with plans to expand

By Kasey Fowler, Staff Writer Enid News and Eagle

CHEROKEE — Great Salt Plains Health Center is remodeling the former Alfalfa County Hospital into new offices.

In December, GSPHC received a $2.8 million grant from the federal Bureau of Primary Health Care for the project.

The center’s board of directors voted in June to proceed with detailed drawings by McFarland Davies Architects of Tulsa in hopes of receiving an economic stimulus award for the project.

“We applied for the grant in August. That award was made in December. We were ready to take bids shortly after it was awarded,” said Tim Starkey, executive director of GSPHC. “We wanted it to be a shovel-ready project. As we were writing the grant, we’d been working with architects, designing the building and getting the documents ready to do bids as soon as the grant was awarded.”

Crossland Construction is contracted to do construction work.

“We are going to gut the interior of the whole hospital,” Starkey said, “ninety-five percent of the inside is coming down.”

Center officials hope to create about 20 to 25 in construction jobs as the project is ongoing, and once renovation is complete, they want to add more health care-related positions.

The former hospital is in the same block as Great Salt Plains Health Center. It was built in 1978 and has been unoccupied since the 1990s.

“When we bought it a couple years ago, we bought it from some private individuals. We purchased the building with the plan to renovate and move in to it,” said Starkey.

The building is in fairly good condition for being vacant for 17 years. One of the front doors of the facility has been shot with a BB gun, according to Starkey, and it has been broken into a few times.

“When we bought it, the roof was leaking pretty bad. We patched it,” said Starkey.

Currently, GSPHC provides mainly primary family health care services.

Once the facility renovations are complete, the center will include two family medicine practitioners, two obstetrics/gyn-ecology practitioners, a dentist and three behavioral health practitioners, as well as ancillary services to support providers.

“We hope to draw patients from outside Alfalfa County that need low cost health care. We will draw people into Cherokee, which is good for the community. We will add X-ray here. Patients have had to drive to Alva or Enid to have those done. We will be able to do them here,” said Starkey. “One of the big needs is affordable dental services. We will be able to provide that for folks who can’t afford to pay full price.”

Once the renovations are complete, Great Salt Plains Health Center will move all operations to the newly renovated 16,000-square-foot building.

The current building GSPHC occupies belongs to the county, and “they have generously leased it to us for a $1 a year for a while,” Starkey said.

“We are working with the county commissioners to see what health care we can get in here when we move out,” he said. “The 4,000 square feet here could be other service we don’t provide, like physical therapy or a pharmacy.”

Starkey said they hope to have construction on the former Alfalfa County Hospital under way in the next few weeks, and the project is slated for six months.

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Northwest Oklahoma 1
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