Pictured above left to right: Tribal Council member Julie Siestreem, Chief Doc Slyter, Chairman Brad Kneaper, Vice-Chair Doug Barrett, Council member Iliana Montiel, Council member Teresa Spangler, CEO LeeAnn Wander, and Health Administrator John Reeves III.
This article was originally published in the September 2023 issue of The Voice of CLUSI (Issue 9, Volume 24) you can view the full issue in PDF format.
Contributed by Morgan Gaines, Communications Specialist
The Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians held a Groundbreaking Ceremony at the future site of the Three Rivers Health Center located in Coos Bay, Oregon. The Tribe purchased the old Banner Bank building in Empire over a year ago in hopes of creating a much-needed healthcare facility for the Tribal community and surrounding area. That endeavor has officially begun.
Members of the Tribal Council gathered together at the site on Tuesday, August 8th at 10:00 a.m., followed by bus loads of Tribal Government staff invited to attend. An opening invocation was given by Chief Doc Slyter who also offered up a flute song for the event. Each member of Tribal Council shared a few words at the incredible undertaking of this future health center. They expressed how excited and proud they are in making such vital services available to the community. Council member Iliana Montiel, Assistant Director of Health Services, served as Interim Health Director for over a year and who has pushed from the beginning for a Tribally operated clinic gave a heartfelt welcome. Happy tears were shed as she shared that “this center has been a long time in the making. There has long been an identified need for extended mental health and primary health services for the area, and I’m just so happy to see that we’re finally getting this center going for our community. Our Elders and people need services here and they are finally going to get them.”
The Three Rivers Health Center will aim to fill the gaps in healthcare and bring much needed qualified service providers to the area. The center will also offer state of the art mental health pods to allow for remote access to match patients to providers and services not otherwise offered in the bay area.
“This center has been a long time in the making. There has long been an identified need for extended mental health and primary health services for the area, and I’m just so happy to see that we’re finally getting this center going for our community. Our Elders and people need services here and they are finally going to get them.”
Iliana Montiel
Council Member and Assistant Director of Health Services
The Tribe has purchased Telehealth pods that are going to connect Eugene, Florence and Coos Bay, the three locations of the Tribes Government Offices, with Coos Bay being the hub. These telehealth pods will essentially act like mobile remote exam rooms, where specialist will connect with to patients remotely so they will not have to drive to Eugene, Portland or elsewhere to access services. Travel has been a large hindrance to accessing health care services within the Tribal community. Our Tribe will be the first in the country to be implementing this type of care system and will be a huge benefit to the entire local community.
Lee Ann Wander, Chief Executive Officer stated “our pods are going to be the first of their kind in the United States so we are definitely going to be a model Tribe for the services and health care we are going to be bringing and the way we deliver those services.”
Walking through the building, CTCLUSI Health Administrator John Reeves III shared some details about the coming health center and it’s lay out. “We will have a pharmacy, medical, and behavioral health”, gesturing towards the existing bank vault and drive up tellers window, “where we are standing right here is actually the pharmacy. We’ll be utilizing the vault and have a two-lane drive thru window, because that’s hard to come by in this area.”
“The health center will basically be broken up into two different tracks. You’ll have a medical side and a behavioral health side. From the reception area, patients will gain access back into the clinic where we’ll have six exam rooms, five of which will be general medical exam rooms and we will also have a procedure room. We’ll have three providers, probably working out of six rooms, one of whom will be dedicated for same day visits. There will also be extended hours, so patients can be seen before work, during lunch, those times that they really need to access care.”
The Tribe is also in the recruitment process of bringing on a Psychiatrist and Psych Nurse Practitioner for the behavioral health portion of the health center as behavioral health is hard to come by for folks who need stabilized behavioral health in the community.
The Tribe is excited to move forward with the Three Rivers Health Center. As of now, a tentative soft opening is planned for January/February of 2024. There will be lots of on-going training with the team that’s going to be here and services to Elders will likely begin at that time. A grand opening will be planned later for the whole community sometime in late March or April. While Tribal members will always get preferential treatment and have access to services the clinic will be open to everyone.
More information will become available as the Tribe moves closer to it’s goal of opening the health center doors. Be sure to check future editions of The Voice of CLUSI and the tribes website www.ctclusi.org for more exciting news about The Three Rivers Health Center!
Tribal Council welcomes staff to the site of the upcoming Three Rivers Health Center and speaks to their excitement at bringing much needed and accessible health and behavioral health services to the community
Members of Tribal Council are excited and ready to begin renovations of the space to make way for The Three Rivers Center in Coos Bay, Oregon