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Best friends expand business By BARRY BURLESON
Editor  | Photo by Barry Burleson
Nurse practitioners Jennifer McMinn and Tina Joyner |
Tina Joyner and Jennifer McMinn became best friends at Ole Miss. Five
and a half years ago the nurse practitioners also became business
partners, opening Health 1st Family Medical Clinic in Byhalia. And the
friendship and the partnership keep on growing. They
opened a clinic in Hernando three years ago. They recently bought
property at the intersection of School Street and Highway 309 in
Byhalia for the construction of a new, much larger facility. And within
the next month they will open Potts Camp Family Medical Clinic downtown
across from Potts Camp Pharmacy. “We were working the front desk, the nurses - we did it all when we started,” Joyner said. “We started from scratch. “We’ve been blessed. It’s exceeded what we could have dreamed of.” They’ve
grown from two employees (themselves) to nine in the Byhalia office and
nine in Hernando. At the Byhalia clinic, the staff sees anywhere from
40 to 60 patients a day. “We currently have over
10,000 patients, and we’ve totally outgrown our space (a 1,200 square
foot building on Church Street),” Joyner said. The new facility will be about 5,700 square feet and include x-ray and in-house labs. “We hope to start construction within the next 60 days and be finished by the spring,” McMinn said. The Hernando clinic opened in July 2007, and has more more than 9,600 patients. At Potts Camp, a 2,000-square-foot building on Reids Avenue is being remodeled to house the clinic. “It will be a very nice, state-of-the-art facility,” McMinn said. “We’re very excited.” Joyner grew up in Potts Camp and still resides there. McMinn also lives at Potts Camp. “As
a teenager, I said I was going to open up a clinic in Potts Camp,”
Joyner said. “We’re both from there, and it’s an opportunity for us to
serve that community.” The Potts Camp clinic will
include a full-time nurse practitioner, plus help from McMinn, Joyner
and Dr. Shaun Helmhout, overseeing physician. The
two, who also pride themselves in community involvement, received
bachelors’ and master’s degrees in nursing from Ole Miss. Then they
worked as home health nurses in Marshall, Benton and DeSoto counties
before opening their own clinic. “We just saw a need,” McMinn said. “And it has grown beyond what we could have imagined.” |
