How a New Community Health Care Facility Will Strengthen Rural Kansas’s Network of Care June 26, 2026

“A healthy community is a vibrant community,” says Ann Feil, chief operations officer of the Salina Family Healthcare Center (SFHC). “It provides the foundation for everything else you need to build a strong, successful community.”

For nearly 50 years, SFHC has provided such a foundation for the tight-knit rural communities it serves in and around Salina, Kansas. As one of the few health care providers in the area, the Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) serves roughly 12,200 patients per year, providing comprehensive medical, behavioral, dental, vision, lab, and pharmaceutical care regardless of income level, insurance coverage, and ability to pay. That number will soon grow as the organization completes the development of a new, purpose-built, 76,000-square-foot facility that will double SFHC’s current square footage, bring all of its services together under one roof for the first time, and drastically expand its capacity to meet the health care needs of the five-county area it serves in central Kansas.

Once completed, the new clinic will feature 30 exam rooms and 16 dental operatories, with more room available to accommodate future growth. With more physical space and 20 new staff members who will be hired as a result of the new facility, SFHC will be able to serve at least 1,500 additional patients per year. This will help the clinic keep pace with demand for its services that has increased consistently year over year. At the same time, the facility will reduce the barriers patients face in accessing health services. SFHC already partners with the local bus operator to transport patients to the clinic, and the new facility will be located in central Salina along public bus lines, making it even easier for patients without reliable transportation to get to their appointments.

In keeping with SFHC’s goal to be a full-service provider equipped to holistically support health, its new facility will also include ample space for community education. In four conference rooms, SFHC staff will offer educational seminars on topics like heart health, blood pressure and blood sugar monitoring, CPR, and diabetes management. Through these sessions, SFHC will deepen its impact by helping to ensure that residents in the region have access to a multitude of resources that help them better manage their health and wellness. This will benefit not only the residents that participate in the programming but also the communities where they live.

“Keeping your community members healthy allows you to have a healthier workforce,” explains Feil. “It allows people to stay and work in their jobs, contribute productively, and support the community. This highlights how health care access ties together with local economic development.”

The new facility’s role as a catalyst for local economic development is one of the reasons SFHC was able to secure a sizable New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) allocation to support the $94.9 million project. IFF is among the organizations contributing to the capital stack, providing a $15 million NMTC allocation that’s the largest in the 24-year history of IFF’s NMTC program. Other organizations providing NMTCs include Community Hospitality Healthcare Services, BlueHub Capital, Central Bank of Kansas City, and Capital One, which is also serving as the equity investor. Additional sources of funding for the project include Bennington State Bank, who provided a source loan for the NMTC project, and sizable contributions from the Salina Regional Health Center and the Augustine Family and Walker Family Foundations. The project also received federal funding thanks to advocacy from Kansas U.S. Senator Jerry Moran and U.S. Representative Tracey Mann.

“The New Markets Tax Credit funding was a significant piece of our financial picture,” says Feil. “It played a vital role in fully funding our project; without it, the new facility might still be a dream for us.”

More Training, More Doctors

SFHC’s new facility will also bolster the clinic’s medical residency program, further amplifying its impact and capacity to serve patients and the broader community. In its new building, SFHC will have triple the space to support its medical residency program, enabling an expansion of the program from 15 to 18 slots. The new space will also make it possible for SFHC to train more aspiring dentists, behavioral health specialists, pharmacists, and nurses.

Collectively, this will ensure that there are more qualified medical professionals in central Kansas, directly addressing a provider shortage in the region that is emblematic of the health care challenges faced by rural communities across the United States. Nationwide, there are roughly five doctors for every 10,000 residents in rural areas, compared to eight doctors for every 10,000 residents in urban centers. A shortage of doctors in already geographically dispersed communities often means that patients need to travel great distances—sometimes several hours—to access medical care. In an emergency, that travel time can literally mean the difference between life and death.

“Here in Kansas, there are quite a few counties that do not have primary care or family medicine physicians, and many of them do not have a local hospital,” Feil explains. In addition to the town of Salina, SFHC serves patients from all over Saline County, as well as neighboring McPherson, Dickinson, Ottawa, and Ellsworth counties.

SFHC’s expanded training capabilities will help address this gap in care and build on the organization’s roots in training and educating rural physicians. The organization was founded in 1979 as the Salina Health Education Foundation, whose Smoky Hill Family Medicine Residency program was explicitly designed to address the shortage of medical professionals in rural Salina. In 2004, the training program merged with Salina’s free health clinic, Salina Cares, to form SFHC.

“Rural communities have unique needs, and treating them requires specific skills,” Feil explains. “Our residency training program is specifically designed to provide the physicians we train the skills to be able to go out into those rural communities. And to do that, it’s crucial that they learn in rural communities as well.”

Since its founding, over 90 percent of graduates of the Smoky Hill Family Medicine Residency program have continued to live in and serve communities in rural Kansas. The program intentionally recruits its residents from many of the same communities that they eventually serve to achieve this high retention rate among rural physicians.

“It’s important that we provide this residency program in a rural setting to encourage the residents to remain in a rural setting,” Feil says. “They’re born and raised in those same communities, and they have that personal desire to go back and care for the members of their community that helped them grow, that were a part of their childhood and their school years.”

Beyond the immediate medical benefits, increasing the number of doctors in rural Kansas communities will also bolster central Kansas’s economy. A 2018 impact study by the American Medical Association found that adding physicians to communities stimulates local economies through the creation of jobs, the generation of state and local tax revenue, the provision of goods and services, and the purchasing of additional goods and services within communities. In Kansas specifically, each physician generates an average of $2 million in economic output per year. Additionally, when quality health care is more readily available, small towns are better able to retain existing residents and attract new ones — an essential ingredient for long-term regional stability.

Strengthening a Local Ecosystem of Support

In addition to the medical and economic benefits of SFHC’s new clinic, the facility will bolster the organization’s relationships with a network of organizations and partners whose collective work strengthens the region. As a longtime community anchor, SFHC is already an essential member of this tight-knit ecosystem that includes local churches, shelters serving the unhoused, and specialized providers focused on mental health and substance use disorder. These partners regularly refer people to SFHC and host the organization’s “Healthcare On Wheels” mobile medical unit for urgent care treatment, preventative screenings, and immunizations.

“I’m most proud of just how well our town’s different agencies come together and provide that support for our community members,” Feil says. “We want to do what’s best for our friends and family. If our friends at the food bank are the best resource to help our patients, then we’ll reach out to them. If we need to call upon the therapist at the mental health center, then we can connect patients to them too.”

For Feil, SFHC’s new purpose-built facility is the next logical step in strengthening the localized support system and positioning the organization for stable, long-term growth that will secure its role in the fabric of the community for decades to come.

“We get to design this new building from the get-go, and we’re able to think about what we can build to best support our processes and workflow,” Feil says. “It will lead to a more productive work environment. We’ll be able to grow into this space in a more natural way, which ultimately means we can provide better care for our patients.”