Sanford Health Bemidji Opens New Peak Center with Outpatient Therapy

Sanford Health in Bemidji held a grand opening for its new Peak Center on Tuesday. The newly relocated outpatient therapy department on 2017 Net Way NW was previously a part of the group’s Orthopedics & Sports Medicine Center on the main Sanford Bemidji campus.

Moving to the 23,000-square-foot, $3.3 million facility was done for several reasons, the biggest of which was that Sanford was outgrowing its previous space.

“We have recruited 35 new clinicians,” said Sanford Bemidji President and CEO Karla Eischens. “Some of them are replacements, but some of them are new, new services. So we are in the depth of making sure we have space for everybody that we’ve recruited and that we need to recruit for our community.”

“Physical therapy will focus on balance, walking, strengthening the whole body,” explained Sanford Peak Center Director of Rehab Services Tanya Engesether. “Occupational therapy deals with the occupations of living or things that people need to do to perform their daily functions. Speech therapy services [work] on anything from swallow function to speech, articulation, and clarity, cognition. In general, therapists’ focuses are to restore or return people to the highest level of function possible.”

By offering all these different therapies in one building, it not only helps with Sanford staffing but can also potentially help patients.

“We may have patients who have suffered a stroke, so they may need physical, occupational, and speech therapy services,” said Engesether. “So it’s really important to us to be able to coordinate that care and provide it all in one location so that they can make one trip in, get their therapy services at one time, and not have to bounce around to different locations for that.”

Plans for the project started in August of 2024, but moving all of the equipment was done in only three days. Although the grand opening is just now being held, the facility has been open since mid-May, and staff have seen more than 15,000 patients.

“I don’t think we’ve assessed that, ‘Oh my gosh, we have a ton more [patients],’ but I think that’s ramping up and we’re going to be able to definitely see more patients in this space,” said Eischens.

The outpatient therapy rooms and machines only take up half the facility, with the other side being office space for non-patient-facing workers.

“[We have] pharmacy, behavioral health, health information management, quality, marketing, and all kinds of other people,” Eischens added.

Sanford Bemidji has not yet determined what will be going into the original therapy space in their orthopedic building, but officials have said that it will be a part of their five-year plan as needs continue to grow and change.