Business students at Allen Community College have partnered with Allen County Regional Hospital, Gates Corporation, Russell Stover Chocolates and Thrive Allen County to draft a hypothetical business plan for an After Hours Clinic for downtown Iola.
The project will span the entire spring semester, and will result in the students presenting the plan to the organizations as their final exam.
The idea came about through a conversation with Tony Thompson, chief executive officer of Allen County Regional Hospital, and Allen President John Masterson about providing care for students who were not connected to physicians in Allen County.
Masterson, while grateful for the services offered at the Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas, noted previous urgent care facilities in Iola were more convenient and less expensive for students than going to the emergency room.
?We have tried to work very closely with our doctors to encourage them to open their doors and their practices to our students, and they?ve been very good about doing that,? Masterson said. ?Especially these past few years with the Community Health Center opening; they have low prices and are very accepting of our students just walking in the door.?
The conversation brought Thompson to the idea of developing an urgent care facility for students with an After Hours Clinic that could accommodate the large number of industrial workers at Russell Stover Chocolates and Gates Corporation.
Thompson, who visited the intro to business class at the college early in the year, noted that employers were losing money because employees were not able to receive the primary care they needed without missing work. After all, primary care facilities typically are open during regular business hours and unable to accommodate the large number of industry workers and students with unusual schedules.
?Tony had the thought of doing something in a more formal process and was asking if we had any classes at the college that might be capable of gathering the information for a business plan,? Masterson said, ?and if it would be a fun thing for the students to do. That?s when I got him together with Nicci Denny.?
DENNY, BUSINESS instructor at Allen, started teaching at the college in 2011, but has a long history in education and health care. She worked as an online facilitator in health care pathways at the University of Phoenix for seven years prior to Allen and has designed several health care and business courses.
?I was approached by President Masterson asking me if I would be able to help Mr. Thompson, Russell Stover, Gates and Thrive with the business initiative of opening an After Hours Clinic, and if that was something a class could do from the junior college level,? Denny said. ?My response at first was that I?d really have to sit and think about it. This would be a (sizeable) project and would be something that we in no way would say was written in stone as an absolute ?yes? or an absolute ?no? in how they (Allen County Regional Hospital) should proceed, but as an experience for the students.?
This is the first time Denny has worked on a community collaboration like this, but she didn?t shy away from the challenge.
?The biggest challenge is to keep the students engaged and keep them interested in the subject, and to have them also walk away with the knowledge so it?s not just a complete entertainment agenda,? Denny said. ?It?s learning what you need to learn so that when you move on to a university, you?re equipped to be successful.?
Freshman and member of the Allen Firestarter Dance Team Emma Weseloh said she has already learned a lot from participating in the project.
?I like working on the After Hours Clinic business plan because it is really teaching me a lot about what goes into running a business,? Weseloh said. ?It is challenging, because we don?t always have the answers to the questions we need answered to move forward with the project.?
