A long-planned expansion of Wilmer Eye Institute, Johns Hopkins Medicine’s Green Spring Station satellite clinic has been completed, providing patients with a more convenient experience and the potential for expanded services.

Now occupying the entire fourth floor of the Green Spring Station Pavilion II, the clinic has doubled in size to about 19,000 square feet, the number of exam rooms has increased from 21 to 35, and the optical shop is larger. The new open concept design provides five sub-waiting areas to ensure that patients are near where they need to go for appointments.

“Everyone — faculty, staff and patients — has been excited,” says Davette Gray, clinic manager at Green Spring Station for 15 years. She credits her team of faculty and staff members for their resiliency and hard work during the construction.

Planning for this expansion of the Wilmer Eye Institute’s first satellite location started in 2017 and work began in 2019. The satellite office has about 40,000 patient visits per year, with projections showing an increase of 25% within the next five years. “Everybody understood we had more patients than we had space and faculty,” says Kristy Davidson, M.H.A. assistant administrator at the institute. “We were going to grow and do what was needed to take care of the community we serve.”

The clinic never closed or decreased access during the COVID-19 pandemic or during construction. “We continued to maintain operations as if nothing was going on around us,” Davidson says. “We were unsure for a while how it was going to work out, but fortunately, Johns Hopkins Medicine leadership stood by us and supported us, so we could complete the project.”

Elliott Myrowitz, O.D., M.P.H., who has worked at the Green Spring Station clinic since 1998, says the expansion allows more doctors to practice at the location. In turn, the additional doctors make the clinic eligible for more specialized equipment, so more patients can receive care there. “It improves patient satisfaction,” he says.

Cailyn Sonneborn, the clinic’s medical office coordinator for the last five years, says patients have become more familiar with the clinic’s new flow and direction, and staff members no longer need to struggle with a lack of space. “The expansion has given patients more opportunities to visit our clinic and made it possible for more of our Wilmer practitioners to be seen on this campus,” she says. “I think it is important for our patients to feel comfortable while seeing their doctors, and our new renovated space has done just that.”