The unveiling of plans last Friday for the new McFarland Clinic Jefferson location adjacent to the new Hy-Vee grocery store caused at least one resident to raise his eyebrows.
The clinic will be in a separate building, but there will be a door directly from the clinic to the pharmacy department in the grocery store. That worries county supervisor Guy Richardson. He is the supervisors’ representative on the county board of health.
He said at Monday’s board of supervisors meeting that he had spoken with public health director Becky Wolf. “I asked her to find out if there’s anything as board of health members we should be concerned about, or at least cognizant of,” he said. “I do think it seems extremely strange that you’d have a grocery store with a door to the clinic in it. I don’t mind the fact that they’re in the same place, but it seems very strange to me that you would encourage sick people to go through the grocery store to get to the clinic, or to leave the clinic and go back.”
“Maybe it violates no codes. Maybe it’s perfectly acceptable. But it struck me as being a little strange. I asked her (Wolf) to check into it and see what precedent there is, what’s been done in the past,” Richardson said.
“It may be a total non-issue, but I just wanted to be sure that as a public health board, we were on top of it, or if there’s anything we should be concerned about,” he said.
McFarland Clinic has confirmed since Friday that the pharmacy will be on the east end of the Hy-Vee store, closest to the clinic. There will also be a drive-up window at the pharmacy. It would not be necessary for sick patients to go through the grocery store to pick up prescriptions.
