Embracing a Change of Venue | New Health Kansas

Photos by Emma Highfill, Rose Wheat Photography

New Health Kansas, which opened a new clinic at 29th and MacVicar in October 2019, could have had quite a tumultuous year had a few critical events gone another way. But thanks to a supportive colleague, a long runway for moving, and great vision, the hormone, weight loss and wellness practice succeeded in opening its new self-owned clinic just months before the COVID-19 pandemic upended companies’ plans around the globe. 

The move, spurred both by business expansion and by a desire to increase equity, came just in time as Dr. Griffith was seeing the growth of his business begin to eclipse the physical size of the practice. 

“In our particular case, our move was a combination of wanting to own our building and moving due to business growth,” Griffith said, explaining the years leading up to the recent move. “We were in our old building for more than five years, and pretty soon after that we realized we needed more space, so we had moved upstairs as well, so that we were on both floors.” 

With that increase in square footage, however, came a bump in rent that didn't make a whole lot of business sense when the practice could own an office for less. 

“So last year, we moved for both economic and space issues. I was very lucky that one of my colleagues had a building that was an ‘open shell’, that we could remodel. We were able to go in there and design our Utopia,” Griffith said.  And what does that Utopia look like? As Griffith puts it, a “warm, friendly but professional and sophisticated look.”  

“We always worked with what we had in other places, worked around the architecture of where we rented, but with this we could design exactly what we wanted,” he said. “It’s got the glitz of the big city or Hollywood, but still feels warm and like you’re in Kansas.”  The additional space of the new office, Dr. Griffith explained, has provided incredible benefits not only to himself and his staff, but to his patients as well.  “Now when a patient comes in, we can get them assigned to a room immediately, rather than go through the regular process,” Griffith said—an improvement that provides additional privacy, as well a supplemental safety measure in the wake of COVID-19. “Not everyone wants to sit in a crowded waiting room and shout out what they’re visiting for when the staff asks them.” 

In any given year, an increase in office space would be a major plus, but with the escalated focus on public hygiene and safety measures that 2020 has seen, Griffith’s move into a new, more spacious and patient-friendly clinic just two months prior to 2020 was a stroke of serendipity if ever there was one. From the perspective of Dr. Griffith himself, though, the decision to lay more permanent roots in the community was simply part of a bigger story.