The Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin Delafield Clinic is now open, giving patients and families in Waukesha County a more convenient place to receive quality health care.
Opened on Dec. 1, the newly constructed 30,000-square-foot, two-story building is located at 3195 Hillside Drive, near I-94.
“It’s a really great clinic,” said Dr. Tom Sato, co-director of CHW’s Pediatric Surgery Burn Clinic, chief executive officer of Children’s Specialty Group, and professor of pediatric surgery at the Medical College of Wisconsin. “It’s easy to park, and it has all the elements that I would look for in terms of being a parent and living in that area.”
The clinic provides specialty care in: asthma/allergy; cardiology; dermatology; ear, nose and throat; gastroenterology; orthopedics; speech and audiology; urology; primary care; imaging; and physical and occupational therapy for children and adolescents.
The clinic also has a physical therapy gym with exercise equipment and a basketball court for young athletes, along with a hydrotherapy pool for additional physical and sports medicine therapies.
Physical therapy, orthopedics, sports medicine and imaging are on the first floor.
The second floor consists of primary and specialty care, a lab, and a 900-square-foot remote dispensing site operated by Skywalk Pharmacy. Skywalk Pharmacy also has locations at Children’s Hospital’s main campus in Wauwatosa and at its New Berlin clinic, the latter of which opened in August.
Bright colors like green, orange and blue are featured throughout the Delafield building, and framed local high school jerseys are hung on the walls to showcase CHW’s support of the local community.
“We wanted to design a space that would appeal to all kids zero to 18,” said Children’s Hospital project manager Michael Flaherty of the building. “And we wanted it to be light and cheery.”
The Delafield clinic is among two dozen ambulatory outpatient facilities that encompass both primary and specialty care. Other clinics are located in Fox Point, Greenfield, Kenosha, Milwaukee, New Berlin, Pewaukee, Wauwatosa, Green Bay and Neenah.
“We looked at where our current presence is,” Sato said. “In the Waukesha area, we’ll be serving a group of children who (otherwise would) either have to drive in to the main campus (in Wauwatosa), which is challenging with the construction, or to New Berlin.”
The Children’s Hospital is projecting approximately 17,000 specialty care visits annually at the Delafield clinic, according to media specialist Gerry Steele. (In 2013, there were more than 300,000 visits to CHW’s 23 specialty and urgent care clinics.) Most patients will likely come from Waukesha County, but Sato said he would not be surprised if the clinic also draws patients from the western part of the state.
“There are certain inconveniences with coming to a large facility that has inpatient and outpatient care and trying to find parking,” Sato said. “A clinic is a great way to see ambulatory patients. It saves time for parents, and kids don’t have to miss a whole day of school.”
The Delafield clinic will be open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., but Sato said it has the capacity to expand hours if needed. According to Steele, there will be three primary care physicians when the clinic opens, and a fourth will join in mid-2015. In addition, 42 specialty care providers will see patients in that clinic at varying times.
The clinic will employ about 24 full-time employees, eight of whom will be new staff. Sato said some of the Children’s Hospital staff will be redistributed so that employees from the Delafield area can work closer to home.
The estimated $6 million facility, located on a 5.1-acre site, was developed and constructed by the Minneapolis-based Ryan Companies US Inc. CHW is leasing the facility from Ryan Companies at an undisclosed price.
Milwaukee-based Zimmerman Architectural Studios Inc. served as the project’s architect-of-record, and Green Bay-based Associated Bank provided construction financing.
Sato said new clinics like the one in Delafield follow CHW’s strategic vision of providing care closer to home.
“We’ll close out the year with Delafield, but I do think we’ll continue to provide our regional services in areas where communities are asking us to have a presence,” he said.
