As rain poured down on the tent, health care specialists with Bone and Joint and Rhinelander city and business leaders shoveled dirt in a ceremonial groundbreaking.
Bone and Joint is building its new clinic near the intersection of Highway 17 and Stevens Street.
“Rhinelander presents an interesting opportunity for Bone and Joint because we have a lot of patients that travel down from the Northwoods to see our specialist in Wausau,” said CEO Brent Turner. “We've always had, in the back of our minds, that it'd be a great place to expand so that we could provide support directly in the community itself, keeping people from having to drive all the way to Wausau.”
Dr. Adam Halvorsen, an orthopedic surgeon, one of the partner owners, and board president, added that Rhinelander has a good recruitment pool.
“I think we're going to be able to find good talent with the good people here in town,” he said.
Bone and Joint is the latest in long string of businesses to put up shop on the stretch of Highway 17 in the city.
Rhinelander Area Chamber of Commerce CEO Lauren Sackett says adding specialty care like Bone and Joint is important to the community as it grows.
“I think I've done more ribbon cuttings in the last year and a half than I did for the three years prior,” said Sackett. “There's been so much growth, and it's really exciting for Rhinelander.”
The Bone and Joint clinic will offer orthopedic care, pain management, same-day walk-in care, sports medicine, physical therapy and diagnostic services.
“Orthopedics is such an amazing field because we're able to take people that have slowed down and seen a decrease in function and really rapidly return them to the workplace or return them to the activities that they love through simple, what we see as simple, operations like joint replacement,” said Halvorsen. “We can really extend people's health span and just increase their productivity, decrease their pain, and it's really an essential service for an aging population, as well as a young population.”
The Bone and Joint Clinic is expected to open early next year. It will be the sixth clinic location for the health care group.
The facility is being constructed by Findorff and designed by BWBR Architects Inc.
