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August 5, 2024
WAUPACA – The opening of a new ThedaCare behavioral health clinic in Waupaca, Julie Meyer, director of ThedaCare Behavioral Health, said is the accumulation of years of work.
“We’ve been having conversations about expanding the availability of behavioral health services in Waupaca for years,” she said. “We started the conversations in late 2019. We got a little delayed due to COVID-19, and now here we are at the finish line.”
Meyer said as a nonprofit hospital, ThedaCare does a community needs assessment every three years.
“Mental health and substance abuse have been at the top of that needs assessment in the Waupaca community,” she said.
Meyer said the community assessment report offered several recommendations to address the need – including expanding behavioral health treatment capacity, opening a new behavioral health clinic in Waupaca and increasing the number of providers.
All of which, she said, the new clinic addresses.
ThedaCare’s previous space for behavioral health, Meyer said, met the needs “for quite some time, but we were bursting at the seams.”
“(We were) unable to meet the demand in the community,” she said.
The new clinic – located at 710 Park Ave. – Meyer said, will enable ThedaCare to grow and meet the demand for psychiatry, substance use disorder treatment and mental health therapy.
Kellie Diedrick, vice president of critical access hospitals for ThedaCare, said when she started in her position in 2001, Meyer and her team had already built a robust plan around expanding mental health services in Waupaca County.
“We shared that information with our executive leadership team, as well as the board of directors in Waupaca and they were fully on board,” she said.
A former dental facility on ThedaCare’s property in Waupaca, Diedrick said, served as the perfect spot for the new clinic.
“(The new clinic) is the western hub of mental health services for the counties we serve at ThedaCare,” she said.
Renovations
Though the building provided a great location for the new clinic, Meyer said getting it to where it needed to be for it to fill the needs of a behavioral health clinic “required some pretty extensive renovations.”
“New roof, new siding,” she said. “Some of the walls stayed in place, but work was done to create a group therapy space, which was really essential and important for us and our patients.”
While some of the structure on the inside looks the same, Meyer said it looks very different than it did previously.
One of the “fun parts of the renovations,” Diedrick said, was incorporating local businesses into the process.
“We had a local business that was able to do the interior furnishings, and we had local artists place their artwork inside,” she said. “It’s really a beautiful space. There are calming colors, a calming feel – incorporating nature as much as we could. You can see trees out of almost all of the windows.”
Expanded, new services
With the larger space, Diedrick said, comes the opportunity to offer new and expanded services to patients – one being group therapy, something the behavioral health team didn’t have space for at the previous location.
“The effectiveness of group therapy and the way that it enhances access to behavioral health treatment is just astounding,” she said. “So the first time we offer group therapy will be a big day for me.”
The new clinic, Meyer said, also includes additional staff – both in the short-term and the long-term.
“The plan is to hire additional providers,” Meyer said. “We already hired a new substance use disorder counselor who started when the clinic opened. That doubled out substance use disorder treatment.”
This fall, Meyer said, ThedaCare hopes to add a psychiatric provider to the Waupaca clinic.
“And we continue to actively recruit for more therapists,” she said. “We need more providers to meet the demand and the new space allows us to do that.”
The new clinic, Meyer said, will offer various services, including substance use treatment, mental health therapy, outpatient psychiatry and group therapy options.
The need
Meyer said it’s widely known that behavioral health – being mentally well and free of substance abuse – is “intertwined with our physical well-being.”
Diedrick said “mental health demand has increased exponentially” since COVID and outpaced what the previous clinic was able to provide and/or support.
“We’re hoping we can meet more of the needs for those folks locally with the new clinic,” she said.
Meyer said bringing care close to patients is another major goal of ThedaCare – recognizing that transportation in rural areas is a huge barrier to receiving health care.
“We do that in a variety of ways,” she said. “Virtual and telehealth care will continue to be important for the behavioral health services we offer. But, brick and mortars still have an important place in our continuum of care of mental health or otherwise.”
Helping address those transportation barriers by having a new clinic in Waupaca, Meyer said not only helps the City of Waupaca but the “western side of ThedaCare’s footprint.”
Meyer said the clinic will serve community members in Waupaca, New London, Manawa, Wautoma, Wild Rose and Weyauwega, as well as other surrounding areas.
Diedrick said people living in rural communities oftentimes face different challenges than those living closer to cities.
“Rideshares, trains and buses aren’t always available in rural areas,” she said. “We knew if we could provide a service in Waupaca County, we could get people access to mental health therapy services closer to home.”
Though mental health has always been an important aspect of the continuum of health care, Meyer said since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, “has come to light, and we talk about it more.”
“We know that the overall wellness of all of our communities has declined in recent years,” she said. “Having the opportunity to seek behavioral health treatment through an entity that you’re comfortable with, that’s in your community and where there are less barriers to getting it, is essential.”
Welcomed with open arms
ThedaCare’s Waupaca operations are governed by a board of directors, which Diedrick said is comprised of community members – “they live and work in Waupaca County, so they really speak for the community.”
“They were so incredibly supportive and proud of (the new clinic),” she said. “Several members of the board – current and former – attended the clinic’s open house.”
The clinic renovations and relocation, Diedrick said, were funded through “what we call re-affiliation dollars.”
“Essentially when Waupaca hospital became a part of ThedaCare, there had been donated dollars that came with that building when we acquired it – it was called Riverside before,” she said. “It was community dollars – so the community really funded this building.”
Diedrick said all involved in the project “are quite astounded by what we were able to accomplish.”
“We’re very fortunate to have such an involved community,” she said. “We’re grateful this community is committed to health care, the hospital, the clinic, and to the services we provide. We are using community dollars to fund a service that is going to benefit the community.”
Patients, Meyer said, have been equally excited about the new space.
“We have been talking about it for a long time – they were excited to get in there,” she said. “Renovating this clinic in Waupaca and repurposing it for outpatient behavioral health care was critical to meeting the needs of our community.”
The clinic is open from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Wednesday and from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday and Friday.
It is closed on Saturday and Sunday.
