Medical center terminates McFarland lease

Staff report
The Greene County Medical Center board of trustees voted Thursday to terminate the lease of McFarland Clinic.

The move comes little more than a month after the board approved a partnership with UnityPoint Clinic to establish a new family medicine clinic in Jefferson.

Ames-based McFarland, which has treated patients at the local medical center since 1991, will be given a one-year termination notice for its office space.

The medical center began an informal relationship with UnityPoint (then known as Iowa Health Systems) in the late 1990s.

That partnership has progressively become more formal.

UnityPoint Health-Des Moines now formally manages the medical center — key administrators are UnityPoint employees — and the medical center has a Critical Access Hospital network agreement in place with UnityPoint as well.

Its Des Moines hospitals include Iowa Methodist, Iowa Lutheran, Methodist West, Blank Children’s and the John Stoddard Cancer Center.

This spring, Greene County Medical Center broke ground on a $22.5 million project that includes a new addition and extensive renovations.

The medical center believes that having UnityPoint Clinic on its campus will increase efficiencies and improve coordination of services.