Health Wealth New Building At Kmc Promises Many Benefits
North Idaho residents have a new consumer health library, auditorium and more day-care options all in a matching baby blue building next door to Kootenai Medical Center.
KMC’s Health Resource Center held its public open house Saturday, serving cookies and punch to dozens of curious residents.
Among highlights of the tour through the new $1.6 million building are tiny toilets in the children’s daycare center (“We had to have the right size,” said Kim Thompson, director of social services) and the Dr. E.R.W. Fox Auditorium.
Fox was one of KMC’s founding doctors and an advocate of education. KMC education director Dee Iverson said Fox is always willing to teach classes.
Not only that, but he’s brought a lot of people into the Coeur d’Alene area - literally.
“So many people have come through here and said, ‘Oh, he delivered my grandchild,”’ Iverson said.
Workshops, classes and seminars on a variety of topics, including medical ethics, child abuse prevention and safe baby-sitting are already scheduled for the auditorium, which can be divided into five classrooms.
The auditorium takes up a third of the building. The adult day-care and child-care services take up another third of it, and social services and the consumer library take the rest.
Reference librarian Joan Hust relocated from New York to take the job at the consumer library. She hasn’t had time to unpack the 1,200 books and audio-visual equipment the library will provide.
The books will be available for checkout to anyone with a library card in Kootenai County. Among a few dozen on display Saturday were Gray’s Anatomy, Family Doctor by E.R.W. Fox and The Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine.
The computers are running, but not yet hooked up to the Internet. That connection will allow the library to offer some opportunities for health research.
Hust can help people research particular topics, too, through specific on-line medical services available on her computer. Some of those may require a fee, however.
United Way’s Information and Referral services will be housed in the social services area as well as ICARE Idaho Child Abuse and Response Education.
Information and Referral, Inc., locates social services for individuals with problems - alcoholism, domestic violence, drug abuse and others.
ICARE provides one-on-one support for parents who are troubled, alone or feel they’re losing control of their children.
A range of social services provided by KMC also are located in the office area.
Down the hall are the child-care and adult day-care rooms. Thompson is excited about the opportunities to intermingle seniors and preschoolers in activities such as baking and gardening.
The staff is planning a vegetable garden that children and seniors will plant and harvest together.
When the child-care service started it was only accepting KMC employees’ children. Now it’s open to everyone and has about 20 spaces left. The adult day care opens in April and has space for about eight seniors a day. The center is located on the northwest side of the hospital.
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