by Baihly Warfield
St. Luke’s is expanding its Miller Creek Medical Clinic in Hermantown to a new location on Loberg Avenue across from HOM Furniture.
The new 20,000-square foot location is 6,000 square feet larger than the current clinic off Highway 53, which St. Luke’s President and CEO John Strange said is needed.
He specifically mentioned diabetes education, as did Clinic Manager Ben Bengtson. Bengtson said the staff is very excited to move to the new facility. “It allows us the setting to be able to do some of the educational things where we just didn’t have room at the current clinic setting,” Strange said.
“We’ve been there for about 20 years. We’ve outgrown our space,” Bengtson said. “And we’re looking forward to the expanded services that we’re able to provide for our patients here in the community.”
Those services will include family medicine, ophthalmology, orthopedics, obstetrics, rehabilitation and urgent care.
“There are a lot of patients that are going downtown,” Bengtson said. “But by providing some of these services up here in the actual community, we’re able to capture some of those patients and create that care that’s a little more convenient for them.”
Strange said being the local community clinic is very important to St. Luke’s.
“It’s part of our commitment to this area and Hermantown. It’s new construction, it’s financed locally. The contractors are all local, and the employees will be all local people,” Strange said. “So we’re excited we’ll be serving the people of Hermantown.”
Strange expects staff will be moved into the new clinic and it will be up and running by sometime this October.