Walt

Saturday, January 14, 2012

I continue my medical practice with the Bloomington Lake Clinic, but we have had a tumultuous year.  March 9, 2011 (Ash Wednesday) our Minneapolis clinic was completely destroyed in fire.  The fire marshal and insurance adjustor both agreed that the fire was totally accidental, starting in the oldest part of the clinic in the electrical system.  Thankfully, the fire started at 3 AM so no one was in the building.  No one was hurt.  Thankfully, we had converted to an electronic health record system 4 years earlier with the backup server off site, so we were able to keep access to all of our active patient records and business records.  All of the paper records were destroyed.  Thankfully, we had some extra space at our other office location in Bloomington, so could pull everyone there.  It is tight quarters, but at least we have a spot for everyone to see patients.  We have been able to lease space on the floor above our clinic space to house our business office and administrative staff.  Because of the fire, we accelerated long range planning discussions that we had already begun; those discussions have culminated with our decision to become part of the Fairview Clinic system.  As of November 15 we have officially become Fairview Clinic Bloomington Lake.  Fairview is leasing space in the Franklin Bank building that was next to our Lake Street office; that space is being remodeled now and will be ready for us to use by the end of March.  It will be smaller than our previous office but it will get us back into the neighborhood.  Longer-term discussions between Fairview and the city of Minneapolis about rebuilding on the previous clinic site are underway, but that could be 3-4 years before construction would be completed. We know that some changes will be coming as we become more integrated in the Fairview Clinic system, but at the same time we negotiated well to bring all of our staff with us, to be able to maintain our identity.  It has been quite an interesting year.  

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