Tim Harty, The Business Times

The need for a full-time hearing clinic in Glenwood Springs was something Dr. Jennifer Bebee identified several years ago. She said it made sense to open the fourth location of Western Colorado Hearing Clinic there, because Glenwood Springs didn’t have a full-time hearing-care provider.

Opportunity was knocking then, but it wasn’t until late January this year that Western Colorado Hearing Clinic officially opened in Glenwood. The wait, Bebee said, was a matter of lining up an audiologist before committing to a clinic. When she finally found Dr. Vedrana Stanarevic after advertising the position for two years, the work commenced that led to last week’s grand opening and ribbon-cutting celebration at 218 Center Drive in Glenwood Springs.

“I’d actually wanted to expand there for a few years, but I needed another provider who could be there full time, because, I mean, I live here. I can’t be there full time,” said Bebee, who opened the Western Colorado Hearing Clinic in Grand Junction with her husband, Aaron, in 2012 and soon after opened offices in Montrose and Gunnison. “So, we kind of waited until we got the right person.”

The wait, she added, was worth it, because Bebee thinks Western Colorado Hearing Clinic landed a gem in Stanarevic, who moved with her parents to the United States from Yugoslavia when she was 6 years old.

“Dr. Stanarevic, she is just meant to be in a small town,” Bebee said. “Do you know what I mean? She’s just, she knows everybody already. She’s only lived there for a few months, and she’s just making friends in the community … just by her being herself.”

In addition to waiting to land the audiologist, it was important to find the right location for Western Colorado Hearing Clinic in Glenwood Springs. Bebee said she loves where the clinic landed. She had looked at places in downtown Glenwood, but street-side parking wasn’t ideal for patients. At 218 Center Drive, there’s plenty of parking and easy access, or as Bebee put it: “This was like very, very easy for them to get to.”

Once Western Colorado Hearing Clinic leased the property, it had to do some buildout, and part of that was addressing accessibility for people with disabilities.

Ultimately, Bebee said, “We got it how we like it. We kind of replicated what we’ve done here in (the Grand Junction) office. … So they have a very, very similar feel when you walk in. We utilize a lot of the same interior design in that other office as well, and we put a little spin on it for Glenwood Springs.”

For hearing health care, it features a handicap-accessible booth and testing room. It has an ear-cleanse lab and a hearing-aid lab.

“It’s a pretty decent size, given the size of the community, for what we would need,” she said.

For the time being, Dr. Stanarevic is the sole person staffing the Glenwood Springs office.

“As that clinic grows, we’ll add more staff to it,” Bebee said. “All of our clinics use the same support staff through phones and text messaging and emailing, and then once we have a more full clinic schedule, we’ll add a support person there. And then as that clinic needs to grow, we’ll continue to add.”

Stanarevic started seeing patients in February and quickly “went from one day to two days to now we’re doing three days a week, so it’s been growing quite a bit, consistently actually, which is nice,” Bebee said. 

“And we knew that was going to be the case. Starting a clinic from the ground up is more challenging than taking over an existing business, but we’ve done both, so we know what we’re doing with them.”

She added they know what they do works because Western Colorado Hearing Clinic staff members never forget why they are there.

“I think the patient experience is really what’s different about our clinic that’s like obviously different about our clinic compared to other clinics,” Bebee said. “Everyone in our office sits and thinks about: What’s it gonna be like if you’re the patient walking in? What does a patient go through? What’s their mindset? How are they thinking about everything? How do we meet them where they are? And so trying to reduce stress and create a sense of community upon someone’s arrival, that’s kind of our focus initially.”