HEALTHCARE

Women's health focus of new Solvera Health clinic in Galesburg. Here are the doctors

Jay Redfern
Galesburg Register-Mail
Solvera Health's temporary Galesburg clinic will be at 256 S. Soangetaha Road, a 13,431 square foot office facility located just northeast of Best Western Prairie Inn.

GALESBURG — Peoria-based Solvera Health has purchased a building for a temporary clinic in Galesburg where it will open with two physicians seeing patients as early as mid-July.

Solvera Health's temporary Galesburg clinic will be at 256 S. Soangetaha Road, a 13,431 square foot office facility located just northeast of Best Western Prairie Inn. The facility will open with two physicians — family medicine specialist Dr. Julio Santiago and urologist Dr. Thomas Patterson. 

Santiago is in his final week of seeing patients at Knox Clinic on the Cottage Hospital Clinic. On Jan. 6, Patterson was one of five doctors who were informed that their contracts were terminated by Knox Clinic as Cottage Hospital began to fail.

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Earlier this month, Solvera Health revealed it planned to locate a comprehensive primary care facility in Galesburg later this year. Solvera's director of marketing Tony Johnson said they plan to add one more physician to the temporary Galesburg clinic which will likely operate for a year.

"The plan is for this to be a temporary location for us, and we'll keep searching for where we want to put our complete clinic," Johnson said. "We'd like to be able to start seeing patients by the middle of July."

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The temporary Galesburg clinic would also be supported by nurse practitioners from Peoria's Solvera Health facility.

Until Solvera is able to open in Galesburg next month, Johnson said patients of Santiago and other doctors remaining at Knox Clinic will be able to see their doctors at the Peoria clinic at 3525 N. University St., or via telehealth.

Johnson said both Santiago and Patterson will also see patients at the Peoria clinic.

"We'll continue to be mainly primary care, but urology and women's health are two big areas of need," Johnson said. "For us as a company, we're in the process of getting our federally qualified health care center status, and being able to provide women's health is part of that." 

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Johnson said Solvera Health has made employment offers to existing staff — nurses, medical assistants call center people — of physicians remaining at Knox Clinic, in

R2C Investments, LLC, which includes Solvera Health, purchased the 256 S. Soangetaha Road building for $275,000 on June 17 from Galesburg Community Foundation. The building, constructed in 1979, had been gifted to the GCF in the past year. Lutheran Social Services remains a tenant in the complex.

Johnson said Solvera will make improvements to both the interior and exterior of the property, including the parking lot, facade and landscaping work.