eople really want to look for a place that they can feel like it’s their home,” says Wasilla dentist Tyler Mann. “People want a personal connection to where they go, so we try to be part of the community and participate in community events. We don’t want to lose that connection.”

To keep the connection with his patients, Mann Family Dental had to expand last fall, keeping pace with the community’s growth. The population increase in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough has brought an increased need for all services, particularly healthcare. For decades, Mat-Su residents seeking medical care had two options: wait to get an appointment with one of the few providers close to home or make the trek to Anchorage, neither of which were always practical. But the Mat-Su’s growing population has allowed the number, type, and availability of service providers to begin catching up with demand.

“You sort of hit critical mass where people are going to want to get their healthcare services where they live,” says Joshua Arvidson, COO of Alaska Behavioral Health, which opened a clinic in Wasilla in April. “I think that’s an evolution in the community—and really a great thing, to have services accessible here. And that can happen now because there’s enough of a population.”

The Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development’s (DOLWD) 2016 “Alaska Economic Trends” report showed that the Mat-Su Borough’s population increased by 54 percent between 2000 and 2013. The US Census Bureau reports a 20 percent increase from 2010 to 2020. The 2022 “Alaska Economic Trends” estimated that as of July 1, 2021, the Mat-Su population was 108,805.

All indicators show that Mat-Su’s growth is expected to continue. DOLWD projects that the Mat-Su Borough’s population will increase by 35.6 percent between 2021 and 2050; only Skagway is expected to experience a greater percentage growth, at 45.3 percent. In absolute terms, the Mat-Su Borough’s growth will be the largest in the state, and all the projected growth in Southcentral Alaska over that period is expected entirely in the Mat-Su; Anchorage is projected to experience a 3.4 percent population decrease.

“We’re trying to be where the people need us to be to give them care that’s easy and accessible,” says Cyndi Cielsak, clinic manager for Providence ExpressCare, which opened its Wasilla clinic in 2021. “Being where they need us to be rather than us trying to define all the rules.”

Cielsak says offering care in the Mat-Su is a matter of meeting patients where they are. More healthcare providers closer to home also means providers can build stronger connections within the community and become more invested in their patients’ lives, which improves care overall.

Providence Alaska Medical Center’s ExpressCare clinic offers patients same-day, episodic care at five express care clinics—three in Anchorage, one in Eagle River, and its newest in Wasilla.

“Episodic care is the little episodes of care that you need to get dealt with that are very, very low acuity,” Cielsak explains. “That could be an ear infection, pink eye, a cold or fever, or maybe you have a rash or some minor irritation.”

Access to primary care services, especially same-day care, is difficult across Alaska, so the ExpressCare Clinic’s goal is to provide that access.

“Primary care is tough, and it’s especially tough if you need same-day or urgent care,” Cielsak says. “It can be something small, but if you need it today, it’s even more difficult, so that’s why we decided to expand our services to the Mat-Su area.”

After COVID-19 pandemic-related setbacks, the ExpressCare Clinic opened in 2021. In addition to treating non-acute conditions, the clinic offers flu, tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis vaccinations, and it can test for COVID-19, strep throat, mononucleosis, tuberculosis, and pregnancy. Providers can also fill select prescriptions, draw any needed labs, and make referrals for diagnostic imaging or other care to its urgent care clinic or the emergency room.

The ExpressCare clinic is staffed by a two-person team—one provider and one assistant—or patients can choose to connect with its network of virtual providers. Appointments are scheduled for 20 minutes and can be booked online. Walk-in appointments are available, but because patients will be seen at the next available time slot, Cielsak recommends scheduling an appointment online and waiting at home rather than in the clinic’s lobby.

The clinic near the Wasilla Target store is open daily from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. It accepts most commercial insurances, Medicare, Medicaid, and has a self-pay option.

“We like to have you in and out, registered in the door and then leaving within 20 minutes,” Cielsak says. “You can get it done on the way to work, get your prescription filled, and pick it up on your way home.”

On the other side of Wasilla Lake, another primary and urgent care option came to the Wasilla area last summer for patients in the Pacific Health Coalition.

The Pacific Health Coalition represents forty-five participating health plans across the Pacific Northwest and offers cost-effective alternatives to office visits through health centers. In Alaska, that care is provided through the Coalition Health Center (CHC), which has clinics in Anchorage, Fairbanks, and, as of July 2022, the Mat-Su.

“We are thrilled to bring our services to our many clients in Mat-Su, something we have hoped to do for quite some time,” says Amanda Johnson, CEO of Beacon OHSS, which operates the CHC. “As our clients and partners have grown along with us, it was important for Beacon to continue to offer a convenient and quality option for services close to home.”

Like its Anchorage and Fairbanks counterparts, the Mat-Su clinic on Bogard Road provides primary and preventive care and chronic and acute illness prevention and management, as well as prescriptions, X-rays, and laboratory services. CHC services are available to coalition plan members and their dependents on an appointment and walk-in basis.

“The time to provide someone with behavioral health services is the day they ask for it, not months later,” says Arvidson. With the April opening of Alaska Behavioral Health’s Wasilla clinic, Mat-Su residents can get comprehensive outpatient services as soon as they need it, without the need for weekly drives to Anchorage.

“It’s something we’ve been working towards for a very long time,” Arvidson says. “We’ve wanted to bring our care to our existing Mat-Su client population for quite some time and also respond to the needs for mental health services. We have families and individuals that drive in [to Anchorage] from the Valley, and that’s just really not realistic.”

The Wasilla clinic, Alaska Behavioral Health’s third in Alaska (it also operates clinics in Anchorage and Fairbanks), is a federally designated certified community behavioral health clinic, or CCBHC, Arvidson explains. CCBHCs operate under standards imposed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which focus on providing access to care and offering a full continuum of services centered around evidence-based practices and treatments.

The Wasilla clinic’s services are similar to those offered at Alaska Behavioral Health’s Anchorage and Fairbanks clinics, with slight variations to accommodate the community’s specific needs, Arvidson says. In the Mat-Su, the biggest identified need is for children’s mental health services.

“A lot of needs assessments that have been done by the Mat-Su Health Foundation show a need for children’s mental health, and we’ve gotten that feedback from local providers as well,” Arvidson says. “We’re going to adapt to the needs of the community.”

Roughly half of the services provided at Alaska Behavioral Health’s Wasilla clinic focus on children, Arvidson says, though it continues to serve the whole life span. Most of Alaska Behavioral Health’s services are focused on therapy, “and we do that because that’s what the evidence says is the best frontline intervention for mental health challenges,” he says. The clinic also offers integrated medical care, an on-site psychiatrist, and primary care for adults.

Having mental health services in the community means better access to services and increased opportunities for community outreach, which means better care overall.

“It allows us to build relationships with schools and the local physicians’ clinics and other things that are really beneficial to patients,” Arvidson says. “It’s not just more connections; it’s better care because it’s in your community.”

Deaths from accidental drug overdoses are increasing nationwide, but nowhere more so than in Alaska. In 2022, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Health Statistics reported that Alaska had a 75.3 percent increase in overdose deaths compared to 2020, five times larger than the 15 percent national increase. The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services’ Opioid Data Dashboard reports 169 overdose deaths from September 2021 to August 2022. Between December 2021 and November 2022, the Mat-Su Borough led the state in opioid-related emergency room visits, at 41.8 per 10,000 visits, nearly 1.5 times the rate of visits in Anchorage, which ranks second.

To help combat these numbers, in November 2022 True North Recovery opened Dylan’s Place, an eight-bed residential withdrawal management program. Located in Wasilla, Dylan’s Place is the first and only residential detox facility in the Mat-Su, and one of only a dozen in Alaska. The facility specializes in helping people with methamphetamine and opiate misuse disorders, but it can help patients detox from any substance, True North Recovery founder Karl Solderstrom said in a video posted to its Facebook page in January.

Located within True North Recovery’s Day One Center, Dylan’s Place offers same-day access and provides people dealing with substance misuse a safe, supervised place to go through withdrawal. In addition to the detox facility, patients have access to crisis services, treatment assessments, peer specialists, and case managers.

Mann Family Dental opened an expanded dental practice in October 2022, just a few miles from the space it occupied since it first opened in 2017. The location in the North Lakes area, between Wasilla and Palmer, puts it in a community with a larger population than either of the Mat-Su’s main incorporated cities, yet nearly equidistant from both.

The new practice, which takes up the entire first floor of a two-floor building, improves accessibility and is larger than the prior location, making it more comfortable for patients and staff. The extra space also allowed Mann to bring on two additional dentists. He says the expansion was necessary if he wanted to continue to provide the same level of service to his existing patients and treat new ones.

“The practice was getting so big, either I had to cut insurances and become out-of-network for patients, or I had to expand,” Mann explains. “I felt like if I was going to become out-of-network, to me it feels like breaking a promise, so I had to make a change.”

Mann Family Dental provides general dentistry to children and adults, which includes preventative care, restorative and cosmetic dentistry, and some orthodontic care. Mann says the clinic gets patients from as far north as Talkeetna, Willow, and Houston because of the lack of providers in those areas. All three of Mann Family Dental’s providers accept Medicaid, which Mann says is becoming a rarity; he estimates Wasilla lost half of its Medicaid providers in the last year.

The new space allows the practice to continue to serve its long-standing patients and accommodate the growing number of people moving to, and seeking healthcare in, the Mat-Su.

“There’s just a need,” Mann says. “There are lots of dentists, and lots of good dentists, in the Valley, but there’s still an influx of people every year.”

Mann practiced in Colorado and New Mexico before coming to Alaska in 2017. His initial plan was to take over a dental practice in Eagle River, but after arriving he chose instead to settle in Wasilla, becoming one of the many Alaskans adding to the Mat-Su Borough’s population growth.

“We felt like the Valley was better,” Mann says. “It felt more like home than anything.”