JOHNSTOWN, Pa. – A lease settlement authorized on Tuesday indicates that a new wander-in urgent care health care clinic may possibly be running in the town of Johnstown by this time upcoming calendar year.
The Johnstown Redevelopment Authority unanimously permitted an agreement to lease the previous Cambria- Rowe Company College making, at 221 Central Ave. in the city’s Moxham segment, to an organization known as Ave Maria Medical Center, led by Dr. George Frem, a perfectly-recognised regional kidney doctor.
The mission is to open a web-site in which patients can acquire basic medical care for widespread diseases and routine accidents, along with products and services these kinds of as telemedicine, physicals, family members follow procedure, women’s health and fitness and prepared foods for men and women with exclusive nutritional desires these kinds of as coronary heart illness and diabetic issues.
Courses are anticipated to be formulated in phases.
“In a nutshell, this medical middle will have one thing for all people – anything for the aged folks, one thing for the girls, something for the youthful individuals,” Frem mentioned.
Other urgent treatment health care clinics now exist in the region, but Frem explained that his prepared urgent treatment centre is “much wanted for the city of Johnstown.” The clinic will be an extension of the well being treatment he has been offering the local community all over his career, he claimed.
“This is just the journey that I began numerous yrs ago,” Frem explained. “This is heading to … put it jointly in 1 package where I’m capable to give compassionate care and acquire treatment of persons with dignity, the suitable way. It indicates a large amount to me for the reason that which is the journey I started out, and now it’s likely to be significant for me.”
Frem hopes the centre can open by up coming summer season, but that program is dependent on how extensive development can take, given existing provide chain restrictions. He has labored carefully with JRA Chairman Msgr. Raymond Balta on the task.
“I just feel that the city by itself need to have, absolutely, an urgent treatment facility,” Balta claimed. “Plus these other amenities are for individuals who, I believe, are looking for anything that is additional in depth with their wellbeing treatment.”
Balta called the proposed clinic “a wonderful thing for the metropolis.”
“I feel preventive medicine and preventive care and worry, that’s heading to make the major variance in the group, as nicely,” Balta claimed. “I feel this is seriously exclusive.”
The centre will move into a developing that has sat vacant due to the fact Cambria-Rowe Organization University closed in 2016.
JRA, which procured the composition soon after the college’s closure, experienced been doing the job with Pittsburgh-based Telehealth Suite, a well being treatment technological know-how organization that desired to open up a simply call heart to assistance people today recovering from opioid habit. That strategy by no means came to fruition.
Balta and JRA Government Director Melissa Komar mentioned Telehealth Suite did not commit to a definitive timeline, so the authority moved on from the undertaking. Telehealth Suite President Apryle Horbal, a Richland Large College graduate, did not promptly react to an job interview ask for.
Grant funding for the Telehealth Suite job had presently been secured, which include far more than $1.2 million in condition Redevelopment Support Cash Application revenue and $1.95 million from the U.S. Section of Commerce Financial Improvement Administration.
Those cash will now go to the Ave Maria prepare.
“Because the grants that we utilized for were geared towards health care, we’re able to use the grants that we by no means drew down on for the Cambria-Rowe constructing for this task,” Komar claimed. “They ended up our grants to commence with, owned by the authority, never owned by TeleHealth. … We’ve never drawn down a single dollar of the funding, so it is really nothing. It’s just like the grants will begin from scratch mainly because we in no way applied them.”
Condition Rep. Jim Rigby and state Sen. Wayne Langerholc Jr. mentioned they both assist transferring the state money from the Telehealth Suite project to the proposed Ave Maria Medical Middle.