The only constant is change

The Platte Valley Clinic has been a very busy place for a long time. Just ask Susan Foley, FNP.

Foley has been holding down the fort as the sole medical provider in town since January, but now she says things are looking up.

Before Dr. Adrian Durham joined the clinic staff this month, Foley said she was often booking appointments a month to six weeks out and appointment time set aside for emergencies and urgent care got filled under a crush of patients.

“Let’s just say I’m very, very happy to have him here,” she said. “It’s not only better for me, it’s better for the community.

“I think it’s really important for people to have a choice of providers, someone that they feel comfortable with,” she continued. “Not everybody felt comfortable with seeing a nurse practitioner and some wanted to see a doctor, so I think it’s great that we are now able to offer them that. The fact that Dr. Durham is a DO (Doctor of Osteopathy) and can do orthopedic manipulation makes an important addition to the clinic, and certainly, being able to get people in sooner is a big deal.”

Foley has had a lengthy career in medicine. She earned her RN in 1991 and worked in hospitals and small-town clinics throughout the West until she decided to go back to school. She earned her FNP — a nurse practitioner specializing in family medicine — from Georgetown in 2017 and came to work in Saratoga.

“I just have a passion for providing medical care for the underserved like in rural areas. I also do mission work in Tanzania and have been there five times,” she said. “The thing for me is where people need help, that’s where I feel like I want to be.”

Foley provides a wide array of services to the community through the clinic.

“Certainly, we can do orthopedic procedures like knee or shoulder injections and we take care of dermatology problems like rashes and skin tags. Then I’ll be doing emergency care, removing fishhooks or doing sutures, in addition to the primary care – medication management, testing, annual exams and the like,” she said.

The arrival of Dr. Durham isn’t the only change impacting the services offered by the Platte Valley Clinic. Under a new partnership with Ivinson Memorial Hospital, specialists in obstetrics/gynecology, general surgery, pediatrics, geriatrics, urology and ear, nose and throat will be coming to Saratoga for scheduled appointments. Specialists will also be available through the telehealth system between visits.

“Especially in the wintertime every person we can keep off bad roads to get to a doctor appointment is a plus,” Foley said. “It’s not just a convenience, it’s a safety issue. It’s just going to be a lot safer for people to be able to see their specialist here.”

Foley is excited about the prospect of having a new hospital because, she says, “We need it.”

“We need 24-hour emergency services. Certainly, for time-sensitive care where people have to wait 40 minutes or longer to get down to Rawlins as the nearest ER, we’re just losing too much valuable time. So, having 24-hour emergency services here is going to be huge. Being able to keep people overnight here is also huge — if they can stay here for simple things instead of having to go out of town for in-patient services, it makes a big difference. Being able to keep the nursing home and being able to keep peoples loved ones close to them is also huge. Expanding our diagnostic capability with radiology and imaging — it’s just some things that we need in a community like ours that is this distant from anywhere else.”

Foley knows more change is coming as plans for the new hospital progress, but for now, she’s happy to see doubling the medical staff and adding specialty services as change for the better.