Hudson Headwaters Health Network Nurse Leader Marissa Ducatte, right, and Practice Leader Heather Carr sit inside the new office space at HHHN’s Saranac Lake Family Health office inside Adirondack Medical Center. The offices there have expanded to accommodate new providers and new patients. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

SARANAC LAKE — The Hudson Headwaters Health Network offices inside Adirondack Medical Center in Saranac Lake are expanding, both physically and in terms of patients and providers.

The nonprofit primary care facility within the hospital on state Route 86 opened up its renovated offices on Tuesday, including seven new exam rooms with 2,000 additional square feet, making the full footprint of the Saranac Lake Family Health office 7,000 square feet.

Nurse Leader Marissa Ducatte said they needed to expand because they’re bringing on more providers to meet the demand from more patients. She said the increase in patients comes from an increase in access to health care, supply and demand of more providers and more patients building on each other, and from the coronavirus pandemic making people more conscious about their health and having primary care doctor.

“We recruited several new providers so we needed space for them to see patients,” HHHN Executive Vice President and COO Patti Hammond said.

The Saranac Lake Family Health center now has seven providers — doctors Daniel Farrell and Jennifer Rutz, and nurse practitioner Danielle King recently joined — and two more scheduled to join by the end of the year — doctor Arianne Wilson and family nurse practitioner Jaclyn Farrington.

Since the spring, physician assistant Emily Monaco has also offered same-day access for non-life-threatening medical concerns.

The offices offer newborn and pediatric care, gynecological care, noninvasive dermatologic procedures, injections and point-of-care rapid testing for various illnesses.

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Merging and growing

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Saranac Lake Family Health was created in 2020. The offices had previously been operated by Adirondack Internal Medicine and Pediatrics. AIMP’s Saranac Lake and Tupper Lake family health offices merged into the Hudson Headwaters Health Network in October 2020. Ducatte said AIMP had 2,300 patients at the time of the merger and the two health centers now have 7,700 patients.

She said the expanded office is a reflection of the “substantial growth” the center has seen since the merger.

“It’s kind of a nice milestone to have these renovations three years after,” HHHN Director of External Affairs Pam Fisher said. “Because they opened at the height of the pandemic, there was not a lot of opportunity to celebrate then.”

The work to renovate cost HHHN around $1.1 million. The contractor Bast Hatfield oversaw the work over the past five months, doing much of the work on weekends and evenings to not disrupt patient care.

“We are excited because we can take care of more patients,” Hammond said.

Ducatte said she’s glad her team has more space to work.

Along with seven new exam rooms, the waiting room was expanded and the carpeting, lighting, countertops and paint all got a “facelift.”

Health care access is a big issue in the North Country, Ducatte said, where drive times for patients to receive to care can be very long. Saranac Lake is fortunate to have AMC, she said, but for serious and specialized care, people often have to go elsewhere.

If they can do preventative care at HHHN, to keep things like heart attacks or blood clots from happening, that is helpful, Ducatte said.

She said the coronavirus pandemic contributed to HHHN’s growth, as people became more aware of comorbidities for the virus.

“I think it potentially opened people’s eyes to their healthcare as a priority,” Ducatte said.

Fisher also said during the pandemic, some providers realized they wanted a better quality of life and were drawn to move to the Adirondacks.

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Other Tri-Lakes locations

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HHHN patients can be seen at any of the networks’ 21 locations. HHHN is also expanding its hours at the Tupper Lake Family Health offices to include Friday hours.

The health network also has plans to open a new primary care office in Lake Placid at the site of the former Lake Placid Health and Medical Fitness Center emergency room at 203 Old Military Road. Adirondack Health closed this ER two months ago as it downsizes its medical services while facing mounting financial challenges.

Once HHHN gets federal and state approval to reopen the ER as a primary care office, Fisher said it will be called Lake Placid Family Health.

Hammond said they expect the Lake Placid office to open in 2024, potentially in the second quarter. She said there will not be much work needed to get the building ready because it’s a relatively new medical facility already. It was built in 2019 and used until late August of this year.

“Because they had the same standards that we would have, there’s really not a lot that we would need to do,” Hammond said.

Saranac Lake Family Health employs 25 staff.

Hudson Headwaters continues to recruit at Saranac Lake Family Health for a care manager, as well as other clinical positions, Fisher said.

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A previous verision of this story included the wrong name for the health network’s planned primary care facility at the former Lake Placid Health and Medical Fitness Center emergency room. This location will be called the Hudson Headwaters Family Health at Lake Placid. The Enterprise regrets the error.