Wellness/Healthy Living Center Next for PVHS Harmony

By Kadlub, Luanne

In the next couple years, when your doctor says it’s time to do 30 minutes of cardio daily to reduce your chance of heart attack or stroke, he or she might just write a “prescription” to Poudre Valley Health System’s wellness/healthy living center.

Or maybe you’ll want to take in a lecture on heart health for women, or learn to cook in healthy ways, or destress at the day spa. And if you and your office mates are hungering for a healthy lunch, this could be your destination as well.

This concept – combining medical expertise with the latest and greatest in health and wellness – is huge on the East and West Coasts. Only now is it being introduced to the Rocky Mountain region.

The wellness/healthy living center represents the next stage for the 96-acre PVHS campus at the corner of Harmony and Timberline roads in southeast Fort Collins, which has been under development since 1999. A new medical office building at the campus is also on the PVHS radar for 2006, although details and timetables are still unavailable.

Though the wellness/healthy living center is still on the drawing board, it is expected to be financed and under construction this summer, according to Rulon Stacey, president and CEO of PVHS. Construction of the facility, which will span 80,000 to 85,000 square feet and sit directly east of the existing medical clinic, will take a year to construct.

Financing has been a difficult piece of the puzzle to complete, Stacey said, in part because “the facility is viewed as a new entity; it has no track record. It’s considered more of a risk trying to finance.”

Not just another fitness center

Another difficulty in getting the project project off the ground as quickly as earlier anticipated, he added, was the community perception that the center would be just another fitness center and something the Northern Colorado community does not need.

“We agree with them,” Stacey said. “We don’t need another fitness center. What they (the detractors) don’t understand is this is not even close to that.”

Physicians interested in the project visited multiple different wellness/healthy living center setups before settling upon the one designed by Fitness and Wellness Professionals, based in Princeton, N.J., according to Heart Center of the Rockies cardiologist Gary Luckasen, who visited 10 sites himself. Fitness and Wellness Professionals is a minor partner in the project.

The PVHS center will be anchored by a 40-member medical advisory panel of physicians that represent a variety of specialties to provide direction to the staff and oversee the content of educational offerings.

The physicians brought the wellness healthy living model to the attention of the PVHS administration. That medical component, Stacey said, is one of the key ingredients that sets this center apart from fitness centers.

“The physicians came to us with a new way to keep their patients more healthy. They don’t just want to see them when they’re sick in their offices. We loved the idea and started to pursue it.”

As for the wellness/healthy living center, Arleen Richardson, project manager for PVHS System Development, said the Fort Collins location is a beta site for other possible locations in Colorado. “There’s nothing like it in Colorado,” she said.

Others take note

Other health systems, including some in Denver, are watching the Fort Collins center with great interest. If all goes as planned, PVHS is looking to partner with other health organizations in building wellness/healthy living centers, according to Stacey.

“We think the plan we’re putting together on the Harmony Campus is so unique, it’s something other communities are very interested in for their communities. We’ve talked about duplicating this same facility in other places not only in Northern Colorado, but around the country,” he said.

In addition to fitness programs, the wellness/healthy living center will offer rehabilitation and therapy programs; alternative therapies, including acupuncture, biofeed-back and massage; a women’s heart-screening program; a lecture hall and smaller meeting rooms; a healthy-cooking demonstration kitchen; day spa and a healthy foods cafe or restaurant.

Community education currently provided by PVHS will have a big presence at the new center, Richardson said. “Right now it’s helter- skelter throughout town. ‘

And although the exercise equipment is integral to the facility, Stacey said it’s not expected to draw those who frequent traditional fitness centers. Instead, the facility is expected to draw the other 85 percent of the population that can’t achieve a healthy lifestyle without hand-holding and medical and nutritional monitoring.

Equipment will be geared toward those with myriad health issues, including bariatric patients who can weigh several hundred pounds.

“We’re not marketing to the 15 percent who exercise regularly and can keep fit on their own. We’re marketing to the population that never steps into a facility,” Stacey said.

Luckasen noted that currently there are a group of 100 to 200 cardiac patients who meet informally to exercise together, sometimes simply walking around a track. The wellness/healthy living center will provide an outlet for these and other rehab patients to receive those services and graduate to regular fitness regimes all the while receiving more medical supervision than they would elsewhere.

The center, he added, is designed to reduce failure rates – failure to continue rehab, failure to stick with an exercise program, failure to stay on a healthy diet.

Copyright Northern Colorado Business Review Mar 03, 2006