Franklin County Medical Center Rehabilitation Center up and running

“It’s a dream come true actually.”

A sentiment echoed by many in the community of Preston, now that the bigger and better medical rehabilitation center is up and running.

The Franklin County Medical Center Rehabilitation Center has been in the works for about a year and a half.

The new space has six times the amount of room the original location had. Leo Robertson, director of rehab services, said with its increased need for more services, and its increase in the number of patients, more room was a must.

“I’ve been the director for about four or five years now and we started off with 800 square feet,” Robertson said. “We actually were seeing about 3,300 patients per year in that small, 800 square feet. I believe in the last two years, we’ve increased that to almost 5,000 visits. And now we’re in this great place, which is about 4,500 square feet. So right there, it’s going to help us a ton to be able to bring in more patients from our community to be able to treat them better.”

“They were just not able to keep up and patients were having to wait and not have as many visits a week as they should have had because there just wasn’t room at the facility,” said Allyson Wadsworth, the health services foundation director for FCMC.

She said because of those reasons the FCMC board felt the new location for the rehab center was a top priority.

“Our services range from everything from orthopedic to post surgery, neurological, we even do some wound care and vertigo treatments,” Robertson described.

The center also offers sports training and medicine, plus both occupational and speech therapy services.

Robertson said they officially moved into the new space in September and so far, the patients are loving it.

“I think it’s really crucial,” he said. “When you talk about the sports medicine part of it, and sports specific activities, a lot of our kids, they want to be better at their sports, they want to be the best they can be in high school and even look into college and the closest place is 35 minutes away – 30 minutes away.”

“It’s also very nice and convenient for the patients here to be able to stay close to home and not have to spend the money to go elsewhere because that really was happening,” Wadsworth added.

So she said it’s a good economic boost and helps retain its community members.

Robertson and Wadsworth said it wouldn’t have been possible without a large donation from the Idaho Elks Association.

The group donated $265,000 last week to the center, which Robertson said helped them provide more equipment and necessities.

KIFI/KIDK spoke to a few of the center’s patients and they said they like the new center so far and think it’s a success.