By Frank Lewis
Valley View Health Centers, located at the corner of Seventh and Broadway streets in Portsmouth, is a new state-of-the-art health cente,r and Monday they opened their parking lot to the public for their first Community Baby Shower.
“We had one at our Waverly site in August and it went really well,” Nikki Spencer, director of the pre-natal program at Valley View Health Centers, said. “So we decided to try it in Scioto County.”
Services at the Community Baby Shower included participation by local agencies who provided information on their programs.
“If you look around we have education about safe sleep, car seat safety, tobacco use during pregnancy, dental education, you name it we probably have it covered,” Spencer said. “We’re just trying to get everybody out – new moms, pregnant moms, and we’ve got a raffle and all kinds of stuff to give away.”
Spencer said the facility is open year round to serve the needs of the community.
“We provide pre-natal services three days a week,” Spencer said. “We have Carolyn Pettit, who is a clinical nurse specialist. She specializes in seeing OB (obstetrics) patients. We also rotate four of the local OB doctors. They come through on a weekly basis. One is here to see the high-risk pregnancies.”
Pettit said she offers a wide range of services.
“I take gynecologic visits – pap smears, STI (D) testing for anybody,” Pettit said. “We do breast exams, pelvic exams. We do all of that. So it’s not just for pregnant women.”
Spencer said people seeking their services do not have to be referred. They can walk in.
“We do pregnancy testing and we can see them through their entire pregnancy,” Spencer said. “We also do Gyn (Gynecology) in addition to OB and we also have a family practice here and we have a dental staff as well.”
“We can offer full service for cleanings, exams, and for children, we start seeing them at age one when they start having their teeth just to get them used to coming in,” Jean Stockham, a dental hygienist, said. “We see elderly patients. We can make dentures for them. We do restorative fillings, cleanings, x-rays, exams. We car refer them if they need to go to an oral surgeon. We’re just like a regular dental office.”
Stockham said those wanting dental services should call 740-961-4011 for an appointment with Dr. John Loudermilk from Cincinnati. Loudermilk is in the Portsmouth office Monday through Thursday from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m.
“We have the most contemporary gadgetry you can find,” Loudermilk said. “We have the ability to track things and be able to send them to the facilities and also because we deal with a lot of state-funded things, a lot of our funding is based on we have to be digitally capable.”
Reach Frank Lewis at 740-353-3101, ext. 1928, or on Twitter @franklewis.
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