Last fall Northwest Health Care was informed by the Park County commissioners that its leased space at the county annex would not be renewed due to liability concerns. 

The commissioners gave the clinic staff until the end of the year to vacate the office, and by January they had found a new space on the 100 block of North Bent Street. It took that month to prepare the space, but by February the clinic was again seeing patients. Last week the clinic held a grand opening for its new office within the old bank building. 

Where the clinic only had one office in the annex and limited hours — just Wednesday mornings — in the new location there are multiple rooms, which allows the space for separate exams and waiting rooms and a private bathroom. 

“This is a smaller space as well, but it is bigger than what we had, and we have our own exam room now,” Director Michelle Gutierrez said. “Before, when we were out at the annex, everything was just in one room.”

She said having their own space does come with increased cost — the annex space was less then $600 for a year — but it’s manageable. 

Northwest Health Care had been renting a small space in the Park County Annex since 2017. 

The issue, commissioners said back in October, came down to the county being liable if anything occurs within the space as the STI/STD testing, pap smears, contraceptive shots and other services provided at the clinic constitute in state statute as outpatient health care. 

It’s an issue they were made aware of after commissioner Kelly Simone asked the lease renewal to be pulled from the consent agenda during a meeting in September due to questions she had concerning both what was being done at the office and how the lease was structured. 

Now in the new space, the clinic is able to expand both its offerings and hours. The clinic has even added a new provider, Kristin Greenwald, a women's health nurse practitioner, who sees patients 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Monday. The Powell clinic is also open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday for administration, while patients are able to book appointments and do some limited screenings. 

“We're super excited to have Kristin with us,” Gutierrez said. “We’re kind of expanding a little bit, and Kristin's doing some menopause care, like menopause hormone replacement therapy. She's also seeing patients for weight loss, as well as our other services, you know, the annual and initial wellness exams, the STI testing, birth control, all of that.”

The clinic still operates on a sliding fee scale and accepts insurance.

Northwest Health Care, which also has a clinic in Cody, was without a space in Powell for a few years after a previous space fell through when, in 2017, Gutierrez said then Public Health Nurse Administrator Bill Crampton suggested the organization use an office public health didn’t need. 

When Gutierrez approached the commissioners last fall for a lease renewal she had also asked to use the space all day Wednesday — now she has much more flexibility. 

“Being in our own space, we have a lot more autonomy,” she said, adding, “We're looking forward already of being open more days over in Powell than just on Mondays, once we get that clientele built back up and letting them know that we're there.”