DAYTON-Tamara Demean ARNP has been hired to provide medical care to Columbia County Health System patients in both primary care clinics in Dayton and Waitsburg and in the Emergency Department.

"They are working on getting a template into place for me to be able to have my own patient load," Demean said.

Demean will be taking some walk-in patients starting on Aug. 1. Plans call for her to work three days a week in the Dayton clinic and one day a week in the Waitsburg Clinic. She said that beginning mid-August she will cover one night shift in the Emergency Department.

Demean said she is an Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioner with a Master's Degree in Primary Care through Purdue University Global.

"The ARNP role is virtually the same as an MD role. However, it doesn't take the same amount of schooling. The focus is on providing family practice care to our patients and if we think care needs to be transferred to an MD or specialist, we definitely do that," she said.

Demean said the focus for ARNPs is on providing quality, safe and holistic care.

Before becoming an ARNP Demean worked for sixteen years as a nurse and has experience in emergency medicine, cardiac care and intensive care medicine.

She will commute to Dayton from Lewiston where she lives with her husband, James, his three children, and her daughter.

"I hope the Columbia County Health System becomes my home. . . I'm very excited to be here," Demean said.

CCHS CEO Shane McGuire said Demean was one of seven applicants who responded to an advertisement for midlevel providers.

McGuire said the patient load in the clinics has increased since the Convenient Care Clinic closed last December. He also said some of the clinic providers are asking for fewer hours, and that Kourtney Kilgore-Smith ARNP has retired.

"This is a desirable place to work," McGuire said. "We are an integrated clinic model. We have good partnership with the University of Washington, which has given us great exposure and I think has helped in recruiting."