Mark Mantei, CEO of the Vancouver Clinic, recently announced that Vancouver Clinic – in partnership with Humana – will expand their neighborhood clinic model into Oregon later this year.
So far, two Oregon Clinic locations – to be known as “Enliven by Vancouver Clinic” – have been officially announced. The Gresham clinic will open in December 2021 and a location in Clackamas has an anticipated opening date of summer of 2022. Northeast Portland has been identified as a possible third location, and Mantei said that they are on a path with Humana to possibly open up to six clinics in Oregon in the future.
“I look at this as a real positive development in terms of taking what we think is a very successful care model that can really transform healthcare in the U.S. to a wider audience,” Mantei said. “Our proposition is that if we can really integrate care under one umbrella and really do a good job for patients, you can improve quality and save money by really keeping folks concentrating on their health outcomes.”
As these neighborhood clinics expand into Oregon, Mantei said they are building off an innovative healthcare model that Vancouver Clinic and Humana started in Vancouver several years ago where they provide health and wellness care along with extra support to patients who are aged 55-plus. When choosing the first two Oregon clinic locations, Mantei said they looked at areas where seniors with some of the highest needs are and areas where there are not a lot of physicians available to them.
“We look at are there a lot of primary care doctors in that area, what is the health of the area, etc.,” Mantei said.
The clinic locations in Gresham and Clackamas will be in existing spaces with good access to transportation and are in more of a retail setting, Mantei said.
As they researched the Oregon market, Mantei said they decided to create a unique identity for their Oregon clinics.
“We knew it would be confusing to call it Vancouver Clinic in Portland,” he said. “So, we did a variety of market tests and we wanted a way to describe this model.”
Eventually, the decision was made to deem the Oregon clinics “Enliven by Vancouver Clinic.” The name was chosen because the “brand evokes feelings of wellness, vitality and energy, and encourages people to live their best life.” Mantei said the name also enables them to be able to link the clinics back to Vancouver Clinic in some way. The Enliven locations will provide medical care, mental health resources, health education, exercise programs and connections to social services – all under one roof.
In addition to their expansion into Oregon, Vancouver Clinic has also been busy expanding at some of their Southwest Washington locations. The new building at the Vancouver Clinic Salmon Creek campus is well under construction and Mantei said they are still on schedule to have the building completed by September of 2022, with an opening date in November of 2022. The exteriors are nearly complete, and the 80,225-square-foot building will support the new Ambulatory Surgery Center with six state-of-the-art surgical suites, enabling providers to offer more out-patient procedures. Vancouver Clinic will also be introducing extended-hours Urgent Care at this location.
While Mantei acknowledged that all supply chains have been difficult recently, he said he really had to give a lot of credit to their construction team.
“We were urged to order our steel early, and it was a good decision,” he said. “Everything has been coming together nicely.”
Overall, Mantei said that Vancouver Clinic – like many others in the healthcare industry – has faced some staffing challenges.
“I need to give a lot of credit to our Human Resources team, they have done an exceptional job recruiting,” Mantei said. “We’ve held hiring fairs every two or three weeks and were really tied into a lot of training programs. I will tell you, throughout the whole healthcare industry, we’re seeing people leave early – early retirement or they leave because of burnout.”
Mantei said that Vancouver Clinic did lose some employees due to the state’s vaccine mandate for healthcare workers. He said the total number of employees who decided to leave because of the mandate was 58. However, Mantei said they did put in place a retention bonus for existing staff over the last several months, and between the mandate and the retention bonus, they were able to raise their COVID-19 vaccination rate to more than 95% (up from the low 80s).
“All patient-facing positions are vaccinated, which we did deliberately,” Mantei said. “If you’re going to be in the clinics and seeing patients, it’s our duty to protect you and the patients.”
