SHORELINE — As the doors of its new $17 million clinic open here for patients Monday, The Everett Clinic will mark a new chapter in its 92-year history — the first time it has opened a clinic outside of Snohomish County.
“It’s not without risk,” said Rick Cooper, who recently was named Pacific Northwest market president for the clinic’s parent company, DaVita HealthCare Partners.
Although The Everett Clinic isn’t as well known in northern King County as it is in Snohomish County, he said it’s expected to draw patients from both sides of the county line.
It’s part of planned expansion that Cooper said will see the organization double in size over the next five years. It currently has 320,000 patients.
Shoreline was chosen as the first step in that expansion because “we felt north King County and south Snohomish County offered the greatest opportunity for us,” he said.
Two more facilities are scheduled to open in the next four months. A $3 million community clinic in the Thomas Lake neighborhood near Mill Creek is to open in December. A $10 million outpatient surgery center is expected to open in Edmonds in mid-January. It will have three outpatient operating rooms, physical therapy, imaging machines and a walk-in clinic, said Chris Knapp, the clinic’s chief executive.
The ability of a larger organization to provide the needed capital to grow quickly was one of the reasons The Everett Clinic said it agreed to be purchased by DaVita for $405 million earlier this year.
The 40,000-square-foot Shoreline clinic, at 1201 N. 175th St., is in a neighborhood shopping center that’s also home to a Trader Joe’s grocery store. It’s the second time the organization has opened a clinic in a shopping area. The first was the clinic at Mill Creek Town Center which opened in 2006.
The new Thomas Lake clinic, at 3916 148th St. in Mill Creek, also will be located in a retail center. “It’s part of our strategy to move the point of care as close to where people live as possible,” Knapp said.
The Shoreline clinic is modeled on, but is slightly smaller, than the 60,000-square-foot Smokey Point clinic opened in 2012.
The services being offered at the King County clinic include family and internal medicine, pediatrics and a walk-in clinic. Specialty services include optometry, allergy and asthma services, dermatology, obstetrics and gynecology, sleep medicine, podiatry and physical therapy.
Adult behavioral health services also will be offered. “We really think allowing patients to have easy access to therapists and social workers aids in their general health,” Knapp said.
The closest Everett Clinic offices to its Shoreline clinic are in Mill Creek and Harbour Pointe.
The Shoreline clinic will face competition from other nearby clinics, including UW Medicine’s Shoreline clinic near Costco, Swedish’s Ballinger and Richmond Beach clinics, the Community Health Center of Snohomish County’s Edmonds clinic and Edmonds Family Medicine.
The Everett Clinic’s outpatient surgery center at 21401 72nd Ave. W. will open just two blocks away from Edmonds Family Medicine.
Patients don’t mind crossing the county line for medical services, said Marcy Shimada, chief executive of Edmonds Family Medicine. “We have plenty of patients in Shoreline,” she said.
In addition to the new Shoreline, Edmonds and Mill Creek-area offices, The Everett Clinic is looking at further expansion in Kirkland and Bellevue; 164th St. SW in Lynnwood; and the possibility of opening up to three more neighborhood clinics in Snohomish County, Cooper said.
The Shoreline clinic is part of the organization’s continued growth into the more densely populated areas near I-405 and I-5, Knapp said.
That will include expanding more into King County, probably on both sides of Lake Washington, as well as more offices in south Snohomish County, he said.
Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486; salyer@heraldnet.com
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