Local health clinic gets a new look

After servicing patients for 15 years in a 50-year-old warehouse-turned healthcare facility, the Helen B. Bentley Family Health Center is preparing for a facelift.

Using $563,000 from the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Capital Improvement Plan and $3 million in Government Operational Bonds from Miami-Dade County, the center will tear down its 24,000-square-foot building and construct a new center and an urgent care unit on the same lot at 3090 SW 37^th Ave.

The center may also receive up to $12 million from HRSA’s Facility Investment Project – part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

“It’s very exciting to be able to put up a comprehensive state-of-the-art building and create space that contributes to a rational flow of patients and has the most up-to-date technology,” said Caleb Davis, the center’s chief executive officer.

In addition to creating a 35,000-square-foot comprehensive healthcare center and a 7,500-square-foot urgent care unit, the new plan calls for a day-care, 190 parking spaces, and increasing the exam rooms from 22 to 30, and the physician positions from eight to 15.

The healthcare facility, which treats more than 300 people a day, has served residents of the West Grove on an ability-to-pay basis since opening its doors in 1971 as the Coconut Grove Family Health Center in Virrick Park.

“We first developed out of a group of community volunteer doctors in the West Grove as a way to immediately deal with people’s illnesses so that they didn’t have to sit in an emergency room for hours,” said  Davis, who first came to the center as its executive director in 1980.

Renamed in honor of Helen Bentley, a popular registered nurse and community activist who died last year, the healthcare center outgrew its current location across from the Douglas Road Metrorail Station in 1995, a year after the property was purchased.

Dr. Davis, outside of the clinic.

“We are one of the most visible and accessible health centers in Dade County,” Davis said.

Since 1980, the budget, 41 percent of which comes from patient fees, has grown from $130,000 to $8 million.

“The center is packed day in and day out with people of all ages in need of quality healthcare. The time has absolutely come for the building to grow along with the number of patients being served on a daily basis,” said Miami Commissioner Marc Sarnoff, who has helped the healthcare facility secure pro-bono legal assistance.

Davis says many of the offered services will be enhanced with new equipment and technology, such as digital imaging, which the grants will provide.

Datsie Leslie, 56, who has been going to the clinic for all of her medical services for at least 10 years, applauds the clinic and its staff.

“Helen Bentley Clinic is great because I get the service that I want and it’s easy to make an appointment. They have a very good system down here and the people who run it, do it well.”

The expansion, she said, will be good. If she could, she would add one category to the expansion – the center’s hours.

“I do hope that they add hours on the weekends because it’s hard for people who work during the day to get here and use the services,” Leslie said.