This position is going to be an employed position with Grand River Health. It will be a standard Gastroenterology position based in the Grand River Hospital & Medical Center. Grand River Health recently underwent a $90 million, 115,000+ square foot patient wing expansion. The incoming GI will share office and clinic space with the orthopedic and general surgeons. There will be a dedicated office and exam rooms for the incoming GI physician.
You can expect the practice to be 40% clinic and 60% scopes. The hospital has Olympus colon and EGD scopes. They will purchase an ERCP scope if the incoming GI wants to perform those procedures. There are currently no call requirements, however, if the provider would like to take call, they are more than welcome to. 25% of patients who present with abdominal pain in the ER are currently being sent to another facility. These patients could be kept in-house. Most of the ER visits arrive between 11 am-5 pm. The workweek can be 3 or 4 days. Block scheduling is also an option.
We are hiring due to the immense need in the community for a GI provider. Dr. Ellen Dy is a visiting GI in Glenwood Springs. Since COVID-19. Dr. Dy has stopped travelling to Grand River Hospital and the General Surgeons are performing all scopes at the hospital.
Grand River has contracted with a general surgery group out of Grand Junction’s St. Mary’s Hospital. There are surgeons on-site every day and many of them can perform EGD and colonoscopies for the local patients. They understand that their procedures are strictly exploratory, and most patients need follow up for GI disease maintenance. In 30% of cases, the surgeons are needing to refer the patient to a GI for further evaluation.
In Rifle, there are no other Gastroenterologists, so that is a wide-open market. Valley View Hospital in Glenwood Springs currently has a 3-month waiting list. The general surgery group at Grand is performing scopes is happy to turn over the volume to the incoming GI. We spoke with Dr. Joel Shaefer while touring the hospital and he shared that the group would have no concerns with handing the GI procedures over to a GI physician so to prevent the patient from needing to be scoped more than once.