Health Care Partnership Coming to Lexington Park
Posted for Community Development Corporation, MedStar St. Mary’s Hospital and Walden Behavioral Health
By Jay Friess
Several of St. Mary’s County’s leading medical and social services groups have banded together in an attempt to create a one-stop shop for care in Lexington Park, Maryland.
MedStar St. Mary’s Hospital, Walden Behavioral Health, Greater Baden Medical Services, Inc., St. Mary’s County Department of Social Services and St. Mary’s County Community Development Corporation have signed an agreement, effective next month, to work toward obtaining a $500,000 grant from the state to create a Community Health Center.
The group wants to build “an integrated community health and wellness center” to serve the park, and obtain a Healthcare Professional Shortage Area designation from the state plus the grant. The grant would be administered through St. Mary’s Hospital.
“Our whole region is under-served,” Robin Finnacom, director of the CDC, told the Lexington Park Business and Community Association Wednesday night. She said the county is 16 percent below the national average ratio of population to health care providers.
The group aims to eventually transform their effort into a 40,000 square foot building at the front of Cherry Cove’s East Run development, the name given for a proposed re-development of the Lord Calvert Mobile Home Park on Great Mills Road. The new development would comprise 127 single-family homes and 500 apartments on 79 acres at the corner of Great Mills and Chancellors Run Roads.
The half million dollars sought by the group of agencies would be used to acquire and tear down a former dry cleaning building that occupies the proposed entrance for the new development. Finnacom estimated that the demolition alone will cost $82,000, compared to the $28,000 it cost to tear down the old Besche gas station at the intersection earlier this year.
