Midtown Community Health Center is adding 15,000 square feet to its headquarters to try to meet the demands for affordable health care in Northern Utah. The center will have 12 new exam rooms and 10 dental operation rooms ready for business Tuesday. In addition, the expansion will allow for two community-based training programs. Family practice residents from McKay-Dee Family Medicine Residency Program will use six of the new exam rooms for rotations in prenatal care, said Midtown Executive Director Lisa Nichols. Six of the 10 dental rooms will be used to train dental hygiene students from Weber State University.
The remaining dental rooms will be used to expand dental services. Midtown provides a full range of services, including oral hygiene, root canals, fillings, dentures and implants on a sliding-fee scale.In addition to the expansion, Midtown’s existing space was renovated to accommodate growth and expand pharmacy services. The center currently operates a discount pharmacy that fills 45,000 prescriptions each year.
Today, the center serves 25,000 community residents at six sites in Weber and Davis counties. Sixty-seven percent of those patients are uninsured, 89 percent live at or below the federal poverty levels, 35 percent are children and 55 percent speak a language other than English. Those languages include Spanish, American Sign Language, Cantonese, Tagalog, Marshallese and Japanese. Standard Examiner
