June 17, 2021

Avera is going big with its newest addition to the east side.

The health system breaks ground today on a three-story, 86,000-square-foot building at 26th Street and Veterans Parkway that is similar to its west-side medical center near 26th Street and Marion Road.

That includes a free-standing emergency department, as well as laboratory and imaging services, including CT, X-ray and ultrasound.

Other services in the new $34 million building will include family medicine, urgent care, obstetrics/gynecology, pediatrics, internal medicine and dermatology.

“Family health centers strategically placed throughout the city are our future,” said Dave Flicek, president and CEO of Avera McKennan Hospital & University Health Center and chief administrative officer of Avera Medical Group.

“As the city grows, we want to be able to grow with the city, and that’s what this is – a new access point on the east side, and the visibility is great.”

Avera has had a clinic at Dawley Farm Village in a retail center for nearly a decade, providing primary care and urgent care.

“It’s been a major success,” Flicek said. “Strategically, it (the new location) is a great corner with a lot of growth, so I think we have it in a good spot.”

The third floor will be shell space for now, but “we have some creative new things we might do to offload patient beds at McKennan,” Flicek said. “Nothing concrete yet.”

The decision to add another emergency department also is designed to take pressure off the main McKennan campus and to further position the system to see patients in an emergency setting but then potentially discharge them to their homes.

“We see it drawing from Brandon, Garretson, Larchwood, and because of the Veterans Parkway being finished, we think it will draw from a broader community perspective,” Flicek said “You can start with primary care, go to urgent care and then the ER, and we have found at 28th and Marion all those services flow nicely. If you’re too sick to be in urgent care, we can get you right to the ER.”

The east-side location will be able to accommodate up to 40 providers and up to 70 total staff.

“In Sioux Falls, we are fortunate we’re still able to not see the physician shortage other parts of the country are,” said Ryan Vanden Bosch, assistant vice president of primary care at Avera Medical Group.

“We have seen … more people knocking on the door midcareer. The pandemic made them realize they … want to move to South Dakota, (or) they wanted to be closer to grandparents.”

While the system wants to hire, physical space is limited, Flicek added.

“So some will move out of existing practices into this facility, which will allow us to backfill those offices as well, so it’s a growth strategy strategically placed on the east side.”

The new medical center is scheduled to be done in early 2023.

At the west-side medical center, a $760,000 project is underway to build out shell space on the top floor for pediatrics and family practice.

Four years after it opened, it’s full. Flicek said he expects similar traction at Dawley Farm Village.