GREAT FALLS — The Montana VA Health Care System (MTVAHCS) announced on Monday that that the new Merril Lundman VA Outpatient Clinic will open in Havre next month.
The new site at 1753 US Highway 2 NW, Suite 3, will open its doors on January 20, 2021. The new site provides more than 3,000 square feet of space which increases the clinic size by almost 300% compared to the previous clinic (1,136 square feet).
“We are excited to provide Havre area Veterans a clinic that is only the second in Montana to be designed entirely around the VA’s Patient Aligned Care Team (PACT) model,” said Executive Director Dr. Judy Hayman in a news release. “It has been a MTVAHCS priority to provide integrated and streamlined care in Havre and the new PACT-designed Merril Lundman VA clinic makes this possible.”
The PACT design model is patient-centric; that means patients will remain in a single room for all appointments. Instead of a veteran going to each provider, each provider comes to the veteran in a “one stop shop” approach. This model integrates and coordinates care with all additional clinical services, such as social workers, primary care services, mental health practitioners.
The clinic will also feature a laboratory, expanded mental health care with an on-site social worker, a dedicated women’s health exam room, and access to specialists via telehealth. A full-time provider will be at the clinic Monday through Friday.
“(We’re) extremely excited. I mean staff - I can’t explain how excited they are. They're already packing the old clinic up and getting ready to move. We granted the opportunity for the staff to go visit and kind of make it their own,” said nurse manager Ray Tiereny.
The MTVAHCS serves more than 47,000 enrolled veterans across Montana,
