In response to a successful partnership between local governments, the Carter County Health Department, and the Tennessee Department of Health, the state is awarding an additional $350,000 in grant funds to finish renovations of the local health department.

Carter County Health Department Director Caroline Chinouth Hurt announced the grant award to members of the Carter County Budget Committee this week.

“There is no match amount. It is a $350,000 grant,” Hurt said.

The money is coming in through special needs funds from the state similar to the grant funding the Health Department received in 2015 that kickstarted the major renovation project.

The new funding from the state will go to renovate the Primary Care and Family Planning Clinic area of the Health Department, which was not included in the original renovation project.

Hurt said the state was providing the additional special needs funding in response to the “excellent partnership” between the county, city, and state to improve the Health Department’s facilities to allow it to serve its clients better.

The renovations are part of the Health Department’s long-term plan to accommodate the clients they serve and are something that has been years in the making.

In January 2015, the Carter County Commission approved a measure to allow the Health Department to hire an architect to draw up designs for the proposed renovation. The base estimate bid for repairs came in at $870,000.

“That is shooting for the moon with what we want,” Hurt told members of the Commission in June 2015 when she announced the first special needs funding grant from the state.

In that initial round of special needs funding, the state awarded $450,000 for the construction project, covering just over half of the estimated expense. There was no time limit on when the funds could be used, but the state requested the county commit to act in good faith to secure the remaining money for the project.

The county first looked into the possibility of grant funding to cover the remainder of the project cost, but when those avenues were not available, the Commission committed up to $500,000 in funding from the county’s reserves for the renovation.

That first round of remodeling is nearly complete. Part of the project took what was once a patio area and enclosed it in the building to make additional space for patient care. A conference room in the Annex was downsized to make even more space.

“It’s making better use of the space we have,” Hurt told the Elizabethton Star on Wednesday.

One of the significant improvements from the project is the creation of a care provider hub that makes visits to the Health Department easier for clients who are seeing multiple providers or are obtaining care for multiple children.

Before the renovation, the patients had to move from one part of the facility to another when they were seeing multiple providers. Now, according to Hurt, the clients are placed in a room near the hub, and the providers come to them.

That same hub system will be recreated in the Primary Care and Family Planning Clinic through the new renovation project, Hurt said.

With this newest allocation of $350,000 in grant funds, Hurt said it brings the state’s contribution to the renovations and upgrade at the Health Department to over $1 million.

In addition to the two special needs grant funds, which total $800,000, Hurt said the state has also spent over $100,000 on dental equipment, $75,000 on items and furnishings in the conference and classroom area, and around $25,000 in furnishings for patient areas and exam rooms.

The addition of the new exam rooms and other areas is all part of the long-term plan for the Health Department.

“We aren’t going to be filling up all these new exam rooms with appointments right away,” Hurt said. “This is for our 10-year growth plan.”