A new 10,000-square-foot urology clinic and surgery center will open Monday near PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center.
The new building, at 3232 Squalicum Parkway, will house Pacific Northwest Urology Specialists, previously based at 4545 Cordata Parkway, in the old Madrona Medical building that is now PeaceHealth Laboratories.
Two years in the making, the new center is a reality thanks to the efforts of Drs. Kelly Casperson and Casey O’Keefe, who received a small-business loan and obtained one of the last vacant pieces of land surrounding the hospital.
The building will be a one-stop shop for urology needs, with a full-service clinic and a surgical center with a 400-square-foot operating room.
“It’s mind-blowing,” said Casperson of the new location. “This is a dream.”
The Bellingham urologist says the improvement over their previous location – a roughly 2,000-square-foot rental space with two bathrooms – is immense. The new clinic features 10 exam rooms, a lab, an in-house digital X-ray machine, and seven bathrooms with hand-off slots for urine samples.
“Urology needs a lot of bathrooms,” Casperson said with a laugh. At their previous location, she added, the line for the bathroom was often “like a nightclub.”
If patients require surgery, they can go next door for outpatient operations and other minor procedures not requiring anesthesia. Surgeries involving anesthesia will likely begin in late spring.
Although much of the layout relies on strict guidelines, the personal touches – such as privacy curtains affixed to the ceiling in the center’s two procedure rooms – are Casperson’s. The curtains were designed specifically for women, as Casperson heard from many female patients who felt insecure about getting undressed without much privacy for pelvic exams.
The new facility will also contain a pelvic-floor rehabilitation center, featuring physical therapy from Fairhaven-based CorePhysio.
