Horizon Health Announces Clinic Expansion; Addition Will House Family Practice Providers

Horizon Health continues development on its main campus with construction of a new building expansion to begin mid-October.

The addition will be a two-story, 32,000-square-foot addition that attaches to the current Paris Clinic and expands to the west.

“The new space will support the primary care goals for the organization,” said Lacey Stults, Horizon Health clinic director. “We are continuing to increase services to meet the wellness and chronic care needs of all ages in our community.”

The clinic’s main purpose will be to provide additional space for the family practice team. The first floor will be dedicated to that service. The new design will allow cohesiveness of services and promote further collaboration among providers of the same specialty.

The second floor will be shell for future needs, and the existing Paris Clinic space will be remodeled to better accommodate the specialty services.

Horizon Heath has doubled the services in the current Paris Clinic without allocating additional square footage. Provider growth is continuing through 2026 and beyond.

“We have a number of providers committed to our organization with literally no place to house them,” said Ollie Smith, Horizon Health president and CEO. “We have three providers coming yet this year, and at least one provider committed for 2021, 2022, and 2026.”

The need for the additional clinic space is consistent with history as well. The first Family Medical Center on the hospital campus, the Acklin-Shackelford Clinic, was built in 1996. The current Paris Clinic was constructed in 2006, and the need for the current expansion project started around 2016.

The expansion will be funded through existing capital and loans that were initiated for other projects, but not used.

“We’ve done better than even I envisioned at funding these projects as we went, and developing our capital,” said Smith. “That’s a testament to the team we have in place. They need to be recognized.”

The clinic addition will be the third major building project on Horizon Health’s main campus in the past few years.

Smith stated: “We’re not building new structures without also maintaining our core. We have replaced a lot of key systems in our facilities to ensure it lasts another 50 years.”