Celebrating Milestones, Thanking Community After 5 Years at New Facility

CentraCare – Long Prairie celebrates the 5-year anniversary of its new facility this month. Located on a visible site right off Highway 27, the state-of-the-art health care center continues to see growth since opening in October 2017.

In the five years since the new hospital and clinic first opened its doors in October of 2017, CentraCare – Long Prairie is proud to have provided more than:

• 350 deliveries
• 100,000 clinic visits
• 162,000 outpatient visits
• 421,900 lab tests
• 47,000 imaging tests
• 4,200 surgeries
• 187,000 therapy visits
• 20,000 emergency visits
• 3,480 ambulance transports

“We’re grateful to have such a supportive community,” said Jodi Hillmer, Director of Patient Care Services. “Whenever I talk to people, they’re always thankful and have good things to say. There’s quite a sense of pride and ownership in the community.”

When it came to planning for the new hospital, a lot of time and thought went into the design. Board members and other local health care leaders spent months looking into building a facility that was designed to serve for the future.

The overall goal is to achieve greater access to high quality, more cost-effective health care in the Long Prairie area.

“Caring for people, locally, is our goal,” said Hillmer. “We wanted to build a facility that was equipped with the technology needed to maximize telehealth services and to keep care close to home.”

Proximity is important because rural communities, like Long Prairie and the surrounding towns, tend to have aging populations, higher levels of poverty and higher number of patients with chronic illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease.

The new facility would not have been possible without the generous support from the community, who contributed more than $3.2 million through the CentraCare Foundation’s Building a Healthy Community capital campaign. Community support played, and continues to play, a huge role in their success.

“The hospital wouldn’t be here or even be what it is today if it weren’t for the donors,” stated Hillmer. “Over 500 donors make it possible for us to continue to provide the best health care possible and meet the growing needs of the people in our area.”

Those people include the loyal, dedicated, and hard-working staff — delivering high quality patient and family-centered care and service — who are crucial to CentraCare – Long Prairie’s success.

“This is a great place to work and a great facility, where patients and families want to come,” she concluded.

Along with the new hospital and clinic, two years later CentraCare opened Vitality Wellness in Long Prairie, a facility that provides programs, services and amenities designed to promote healthy lifestyles, enhance quality of life and support well-being. The facility includes a gym with strength and resistance equipment, a fitness studio, and a warm water therapy pool.