Portage welcomed in a new era of healthcare on Tuesday with the customary blessing and ribbon cutting dedication at the new Franciscan WorkingWell and ExpressCare facility on Willowcreek Road.
Along with many Franciscan executives, members from the Portage Chamber of Commerce were in attendance to commemorate the ceremony. Senator Dan Coats also sent his Northwest Indiana Regional Director, Rebecca Holwerda, as a representative to add his seal of approval to the project.
According to CEO of the Franciscan Alliance Northwest Indiana Region Gene Diamond, the desire to open this facility is not new, although it took a while to find the right location.
“We see opportunities here to broaden our service area to make ourselves more accessible to the people who may find use for our services,” Diamond said.
The new location offers an opportunity to spread their mission to a new client base. While there are many Franciscan locations in the area, none is so convenient to Portage residents as the WorkingWell/ExpressCare.
“It finishes our footprint because we weren’t in Portage, so we really needed to be here, and I think that’s the big asset,” Gail Mathews, Senior Account Executive, said.
The new resource, which offers two specialties, can service both the citizens and businesses of Portage for many different medical needs.
For businesses, WorkingWell offers drug screenings, employee physicals, vaccines and many medical education services, among a great number of other services.
“It will benefit the business community of having a place to go for those types of services,” Tim Ross, Regional Director of Occupational/Employee Health, said.
The rest of the community can benefit from the ExpressCare portion of the facility, which provides immediate medical attention for anything from a cold to a broken bone.
“For the general public, we’re here to help provide a service to them,” Ross said.“Instead of going to a primary care physician, they can come here and just walk in.”
According to Dr. James Callaghan, President of the Franciscan St. Anthony Health-Michigan City, the ExpressCare offers CAT scans and MRIs that their many health professionals can use for quick and accurate diagnosis.
“People want to know that there’s good healthcare here when they decide where they want to live or where to put their business,” Callaghan said. “Now if someone lives around here, they have immediate access, a medical facility they can go to that’ll take care of them right then.”
With the Portage location, Franciscan can offer many great new services to the community.
“We’re very happy to be here, to be able to serve this community in the form of this facility, which we think makes us even more convenient to them. A lot of our patients come to our other facilities located outside this area. They’ve been asking us to come here for some time,” Diamond said. “We decided to find a facility nearby in hopes that we could meet their needs without them having to travel great distances. We just think it makes us more accessible, easier to use, and hopefully the folks we’ve been serving for many years will find us.”