WINTER PARK —The presence of a health clinic at the base of Winter Park Resort surprises few people. What does surprise some of them is that the clinic is a thriving family practice and has been since its inception in 1986.

“People think we’re all about the emergencies,” says Hannah Foley, a nurse practitioner who has worked at the clinic since it opened. “We’ve always been a family practice.”

But that doesn’t mean the clinic has been static. During the past few years the Denver Health East Grand Community Clinic and Emergency Center, as it is officially known, has undergone significant interior renovations and continues to upgrade equipment such as lab machines and its X-ray unit.

“Within these walls, we will be upgrading things,” Foley said. She noted there are no plans at the moment to expand the clinic beyond its existing physical confines at the base of the resort, where it shares space with the Winter Park Ski Patrol.

While the clinic handles its share of emergency work due to its location, in addition to wellness care and family medicine, it provides OB care, the lower range of mental health care, in-house lab work, emergency care and is the designated workman’s compensation medical provider for several large Grand County companies.

The clinic’s association with Denver Health gives it some unique advantages as well.

“We have direct access to lots of orthopedic surgeons,” Foley said, including via real-time consultations examining X-rays over the internet with Front Range physicians to determine the best course of action when people come in with acute injuries.

That happens frequently enough that the clinic routinely hosts medical residents “to beef up their orthopedic skills,” said Dr. Darcy Selenke, M.D., who has been with the clinic for about five years.

She said the clinic offers both acute and chronic orthopedic care, including doctors who make weekly visits from Denver, and was recently re-certified as a Level 5 trauma center, a process it “passed with flying colors.”

In addition, Selenke said the clinic offers an advantage to some locals who may have difficulty finding certain kinds of care. The City of Denver provides funding to Denver Health as a universal care provider, she explained, so no one — not even those without insurance — is turned away.

“I know the other local providers really struggle sometimes to find a specialty provider” for such patients, she said. Since the clinic has access to Denver Health’s full range of specialists on the Front Range, it is not an issue for them.

The clinic, which was founded by the late Dr. Andy Arnold in 1986, now features the services of two full-time doctors, including Selenke, Nurse Practitioner Foley and about seven part-time doctors during the height of the ski season.

The clinic can be reached at 970-726-4299.

This is the first story in an occasional series in which the Sky-Hi News will feature local health care resources.