* This is a printer friendly version of the original page, made to save you ink and paper.

Brick by brick, wellness center takes shape

posted on Wednesday, June 24, 2009

By Charles Tomlinson
Lake City News & Post Editor, SCNow.com
Published: June 24, 2009

LAKE CITY - A new medical and wellness center set to open this fall will aim to not only offer sick care, but keep people from becoming ill in the first place, Dr. Albert Mims said.

"This is where health care is going," Mims said. "We think we owe it to our community to provide them with some of the best health care they can receive and work to keep them well before they get sick."

The 36,000-square-foot Live Oak Medical Center and iH3 Wellness Center should open between Nov. 1 and 15, according to architect Randy Key. The facility will offer sick-care, well-care and rehabilitation under one roof at a nearly three-acre site on Sauls Street in downtown Lake City.

"The facility and equipment are worth about $10 million, and the center is projected to generate about $8 million a year," Key said in an e-mail interview with the News & Post.

"The physicians at the center will have 25 to 30 employees, wellness will offer 40 jobs, and physical therapy will employ four to six people," Key said.

Mims is one of the four Lake City doctors who will practice at the center when it opens in early-to-mid-November. Joining him will be Dr. Ernie Atkinson, who currently works at Pee Dee Family Practice along with Mims, and Dr. Wade Lamb and Dr. Richard Ellis, both of Palmetto Primary Care.

Also involved in the project are Dr. Steve Imbeau and attorney Ben Zeigler, both of Florence; Dr. Ann Kulze, a Charleston-based physician and nutritionist; Dr. Eddie Phillips of Harvard Medical School, also a physician and author of Exercise is Medicine; and Dan Lynch of VisionBridge wellness management in Fairfield, Conn.

The wellness aspect

"The wellness center is aimed at people who know they should exercise, they know they need to change their behavior, but they're afraid to go into a health club on their own," said Lynch, who said he's developed wellness centers in the Midwest and on the East Coast for about 36 years.

"The iH3 center is nonprofit, through a partnership with HopeHealth, and will offer fees around $35 a month," Mims said.

"The goal is to make the medical and wellness services familiar and more accessible by offering them in the same building," Key said.

"In addition, iH3 will offer custom-designed programs based on a person's biometrics factors that include gender, age and fitness level," Key said.

"Most of the center's equipment is made by TechnoGym, which has created computer technology to track and report a person's exercise program and offer reports that will mesh with electronic medical records kept by his or her physician," Key said.

"The center's goal is to help people who are obese or have chronic illnesses, such as heart disease or type 2 diabetes. The amount of people heading toward chronic disease is growing close to half of Lake City's population," Key said.

"South Carolina contains, particularly in the Pee Dee, some of the most sedentary people in the country," Mims said.

The nutrition aspect

Another goal is to help people eat healther in an area known for its salt-heavy diet and fried foods.

Kulze said she entered the picture after the partners involved in the project contacted her about six months ago. Since then, she has had Mims and Lynch as guests during her Your Day program on ETV Radio to discuss iH3 in a 10-minute interview, she said.

In a statement, Kulze called the iH3 model "the most innovative, efficient and effective platform for large-scale, healthy behavior change I have ever come across."

The partners are still "fine-tuning" the way to best use Kulze's expertise. She said her advantage is that she focuses on motivating and inspiring patients; she can help out where physicians, often pressed for time, might not have the hour it takes to teach a patient how to improve cholesterol, for example.

But doctors have a strong say in helping people adapt healthier lifestyles, Kulze and Mims said.

"It is such a powerful vehicle, tapping the enormous influence physicians have over behavior change," Kulze said.

Mims said he wants the center to partner with schools' dietary staff members to plan healthier meals for children. He also plans to work with local restaurants and grocery stores, which he hopes might label healthy groceries to make them more visible to shoppers, he said.

How it started

"The genesis of the medical and wellness center began years ago with several community leaders," Key said in his e-mail interview.
"It was first envisioned as a community recreation project, then a YMCA, then a hospital-based wellness center," he said.

"Then in the fall of 2007, (Lake City native) Darla Moore, (City Administrator) Marion Lowder and I spent a few hours walking around Lake City talking and dreaming about ways to enhance the community," he said. "There was so much potential in the built fabric and in the heritage."

"With a great deal of federal new-market tax credit money designated for wellness in Lake City," Mims said, "the doctors and the partners decided to pursue what we viewed to be the emerging form of health care in the 21st century."

Mims has been keeping an eye on the health-care bill being developed by U.S. Sens. Ted Kennedy and Max Baucus, he said.

He also pointed to a recent trip U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn made to Florence. The Morning News reported that Clyburn said smaller community health centers should work in conjunction with the larger regional hospitals to ensure coverage of all the areas in the Pee Dee.

"We are also building a facility in Kingstree and (are) in final negotiations for centers in Bluffton and two other cities," Key said. "We have approximately two dozen other possible sites that we will explore soon."

View the original article.

All rights reserved. Copyright 2011 - 2012, HopeHealth