South Lincoln Medical Center in Kemmerer is working on earning a Rural Health Clinic accreditation in the coming weeks to help the community provide better care for patients.

Chief Nursing Officer at the center, Jessie Wilcox, says to qualify for this you have to be in an area that is under served as far as medical care that is provided. She says the main goal of a Rural Health Clinic is to increase the access to primary care services to those in the community.

“Also, it puts this huge focus on the quality of care these patients are receiving as well,” Wilcox said. “What we’re really looking at is we want patients to be able to get into the clinic in a timely manner, be seen, be proactive, and really be able to take control of their healthcare.”

She also says this will help patients be successful in any diagnosis they receive.

Wilcox says in order for Medicare and Medicaid to accredit a clinic as a RHC, certain policies and procedures must be met. She says they will come in and actually follow a patient through the process. This includes making sure medical staff is spending quality time with the patients and answering all of their questions.

“Just focusing on that patient as number one,” Wilcox said.

She says there a lot of steps in involved and they will also come back every year to make sure the qualifications are still being met. This includes making sure doctors are up-to-date in medical services as the healthcare industry is constantly evolving.

“We’re excited about it,” Wilcox said. “We just had our survey on the 10th of January and they came in and spent the whole day with us. We have a couple of little things that we need to change, but overall we did really well.”

She says the medical center hopes to receive its accreditation in the next 30 days. She also says one nice thing about working towards this is it has allowed different openings as far as rooms and availability for south Lincoln County.

“So that we can bring in more specialty care providers,” Wilcox said. “What used to be upstairs where the urgent care was (in the medical center), that is now just specifically for specialized care for patients.”

Some orthopedic surgeons are already seeing patients in this new spot. Wilcox says they are working on getting a dermatologist from Utah to come and see patients once a month starting hopefully in March. She says overall she hopes this helps to get more specialists like a cardiologist, pulmonologist, etc. This will mean patients will not have to drive hours to see these doctors in the future.