Less than a year after its new four-story patient wing opened, St. Peter’s Hospital is polishing the fixtures in preparation for Monday’s opening of another major addition to the hospital’s facilities. The hospital’s new 80,000 square-foot medical office building will host its first patients in two days.

The $15 million, three-story building for St. Peter’s Medical Group Broadway will at first be home to around half of the 35 physicians directly employed by the hospital, including 11 family practice doctors and a half-dozen

specialists.

The building has room for 30 doctors, in addition to a lab, X-ray and full-service pharmacy. Only 16 doctors are scheduled to move in right away, and the building’s entire third floor and a portion of the first are unfinished and available for future expansion. The lab is connected by pneumatic tube to the hospital’s main laboratory, so blood samples can be sent beneath the street for testing without anyone leaving either building.

Workers moved furniture and other equipment into the building on Friday, along with touching up paint and other last-minute tasks. Not all the bugs are worked out yet — 11 people on a media tour of the building were stuck in one of two elevators long enough to share a few moments of nervous laughter — but five doctors are on track to start seeing patients in the new space Monday morning with the remainder to move in by the first week of February.

The family practice doctors are moving from two other clinics in town: Family Health Clinic on North Montana and Hawkins-Lindstrom Clinic near the hospital. The specialists will be coming from other office space as well.

The doctors are arranged in “pods,” 1,200 square-foot spaces that include a check-in desk, restroom, office space and four exam rooms — but no waiting room.

“The goal is that the patient will walk up to the counter, get checked in and hopefully never sit down, but instead go straight to an exam room,” said Bob Gomes, the hospital’s vice president of physician services. Any waiting that’s necessary will take place in the exam room, so healthy people in for check-ups aren’t seated next to sick people in a traditional waiting space.

“Each doctor has a few more rooms to work from,” said David Lechner, president of the St. Peter’s Medical Group who has practiced at the Family Health Clinic since 1992 and will be moving into the new building this month. “The space is much more functional toward patient access and patient flow.”

The family practice floor also includes a “group room,” a classroom-style set-up where groups of six to 10 patients with the same or similar conditions can come together for meetings with doctors as well as other professionals like nutritionists or physical therapists.

“One of the changes in medicine is going more toward group facilitated visits,” Lechner said. The hospital has experimented with pre-natal group meetings of six or so pregnant women, and plans to expand the concept to include groups with other medical conditions — diabetes, for example.

The doctors own the two clinics they’re vacating, and will be moving into space owned by the hospital. Lechner said both soon-to-be-empty clinic buildings are for sale.

“Both have been on the market, and both have had a number of showings,” he said. “At this point in the economy there’s a little bit of consternation, but both are good locations, both are sound buildings.”

Reporter John Harrington: 447-4080 or john.harrington@helenair.com