WindRose Health plans $3.5M expansion at Franklin clinic

WindRose Health Network plans to nearly double the size of its Franklin clinic and bring new services to the city.

The $3.5 million project is supported by more than $714,400 from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), a COVID-19 relief bill passed earlier this year. ARPA provided a wide variety of relief funds including payments to individuals and capital project funding for local governments and federally qualified health care providers such as WindRose.

WindRose has served Johnson County since 1996, when its first clinic opened in Trafalgar. The Franklin clinic opened in 2004 at 55 N. Milford Drive. When the company acquired the building, it was small but was big enough for the number of patients at the time. In the years since, Franklin has grown, and so has the number of patients. Due to its proximity to Interstate 65, the center draws patients from surrounding areas such as Whiteland, Edinburgh and Columbus, said Scott Rollett, the company’s president and CEO.

The increase in patients led to a need for more space, he said.

Patients, especially people who are more comfortable speaking Spanish, are drawn to the clinic because WindRose has Spanish-speaking staff available to help them, Rollett said. About 40% of WindRose patients speak English as a second language, including the Chin population on the southside of Indianapolis, and Hispanic people across Johnson, Marion and Bartholomew counties.

The company owns three acres at its Franklin site, but the building takes up about half the lot, so there is room to grow. The expansion will be built as a 6,190-square-foot free-standing addition connected to its 7,310-square-foot building with an enclosed walkway.

The new building will include a new waiting area, an onsite pharmacy, 15 exam rooms, four health care provider pods, three private offices, a lab area and a procedure room. There will be 62 additional parking spaces and a drive-thru for the pharmacy, according to WindRose’s application for funding.

The new facility will also bring new jobs, including care coordinators, clinical pharmacists, community health workers, behavioral health providers and substance abuse counselors, according to the application.

The new pharmacy will give WindRose the opportunity to provide at-cost drugs to the community through the federal 340B Drug Pricing Program. The program enables qualifying health care providers to buy and sell prescription drugs at cost and without a retail mark-up. That saves patients, especially those who are uninsured, a significant amount of money, Rollett said.

WindRose is also seeing growth at its other clinics, and plans to add on to the Hope clinic in a few years, he said.

Construction will start on the Franklin addition in the spring, and it is expected to open in June 2023.

Once the new addition opens, the company plans to add basic imaging services and new types of health care in its existing building. Plans for the building are set in stone, but the hope is to provide a more holistic health care experience in that space, Rollett said.