Feb. 26, 2021

Midwest Wellness Institute has moved its Minnesota operation to Sioux Falls, consolidating its practice in a new headquarters and bringing new specialty treatments to the market.

The new clinic is at 4308 S. Arway Drive, off 49th Street and Louise Avenue.

Midwest Wellness was founded by psychiatrist Dr. Clay Pavlis in 2012. His brother-in-law, Kyle Korver, joined in 2018 as CFO with a focus on business development.

Since then, the 16-person practice has been in growth mode, focusing on contracted partnerships and independent medical evaluations.

It offers in-home telepsychiatry; opioid addiction treatment with Suboxone; forensic, competency and independent psychiatric evaluations; plus contracted mental health services.

“The things we do well are provide medicine and nursing staff, and we don’t do billing and coding, so anytime we can form a partnership where our partner does those things well and we can provide good service and value, that’s a win-win,” Korver said.

The firm works with organizations in a number of smaller communities as well as county jails and community counseling services. Pavlis is the medical director for the South Dakota Department of Corrections.

Dr. Clay Pavlis

“One of the things that turned out well in 2020 is we try and do a geographic matching of a provider to a location to have a good balance of on-site and telehealth. Telehealth allows us to maximize,” Korver said.

“It’s a high-demand, low-density asset. There’s a lot of people who want psychiatry and not a lot of psychiatrists around Sioux Falls. We’re small-town people at heart and see a huge need in these underserved communities.”

Pavlis looks at mental health “from a holistic wellness approach and is very innovative as far as trying new treatments and being on the cutting edge,” Korver said.

One of those treatments, transcranial magnetic stimulation, just started being offered out of the Sioux Falls office. It uses a short-pulsed magnetic field to stimulate nerve cells in the brain and can be an option for those with anxiety, chronic pain, fatigue, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and memory loss.

“It has a great impact on stimulating brain function in areas that can reduce major depression,” Korver added. “What they specifically target is treatment-resistant … patients who have been on two or more types of drug therapies that haven’t been successful in remission of major depression, and this has shown great effect to help those kind of people.”

The treatment has been offered in Omaha and Rapid City but not in Sioux Falls until now, he said. It’s an example of the type of specialty treatments the office anticipates offering more.

“We’re pretty convinced once we start we’ll have a strong and continuing clientele,” Korver said.

Midwest Wellness opened the Sioux Falls location in January, consolidating operations from Flandreau and from Marshall, Minn., and many patients followed providers, Korver said.

“We don’t want to pull patients from other organizations and don’t feel this is a competitive market,” he said. “We feel there are a lot of people who haven’t had a chance to get the care they need.”