ENTERPRISE — Dr. Nick West, a board certified family physician, is hanging his doctor’s shingle and taking new patients at Winding Waters Medical Clinic, Enterprise.

West’s return to Northeastern Oregon is the fulfillment of a long-held dream to serve the health care needs of rural families and patients in his home territory.

“Winding Waters is very happy to welcome Dr. West and his family to our team and our community, and we look forward to many years of serving our patients together,” Winding Waters Chief Executive Officer Nic Powers said.

West is the son of Russ West, a retired judge, and Mary West, an Imbler schoolteacher. He grew up on the family’s cattle ranch northeast of Imbler and graduated from Imbler High School in 2009.

He then attended Oregon State University, where in 2014 he earned a bachelor of science degree in bio-resource research with minors in toxicology and chemistry. He earned a doctorate in 2019 after which he and his wife, Alex, relocated to Klamath Falls, where

he completed his three-year residency in family medicine in June 2022 at OHSU Cascades East

Family Medicine.

“At Winding Waters, Dr. West joins a team of primary care professionals providing care at clinics in Enterprise, Joseph, and Wallowa,” Powers said.

West will also take care of patients through home visits, delivering babies in the hospital, and working shifts in the Wallowa County emergency department and as rotation hospitalist doing inpatient rounds.

“We are very excited about his joining Winding Waters, and we’ve been working on it for years,” Powers said. “We were aware of Nick West when he was just a medical student, and we knew he was interested in coming back to Northeastern Oregon to take care of people. Happily, he reached out to us to do a clerkship.”

It was during West’s third year of medical school that he worked at Winding Waters for six months.

“I really fell in love with Winding Waters, and since I was already very committed to rural family medicine, this experience kind of cemented that,” West said.

“Then in my second year of residency, I spent another five weeks at Winding Waters. It was at that point that I signed the contract to work at Winding Waters.”

Powers said West is an asset to Winding Waters because of his sharp aptitude for medicine and his commitment to Northeastern Oregon. He was willing to offer “frontier medicine” in all of its deliveries, including making frequent home visits, pulling shifts in the hospital ER, working as a hospitalist every eight weeks and seeing patients at several clinics.

West said he thrives on the cognitive stimulation he receives while filling these roles.

“It’s just been so much fun to be back practicing here and having the reception from patients, coworkers and colleagues,” he said. “In the last couple months I’ve been getting busier and busier.”

It’s the enthusiasm Powers sees in West that makes him such a good fit for the job.

“He’s of the community and understands a lot about people from having grown up here,” Powers said. “Whereas if we had brought someone here from far away, they might not get it.”

West said that he believes in the comprehensiveness of family medicine at Winding Waters and the team approach that is utilized to solve a patient’s health problems. Being a rural health care system, the Wallowa County health center offers an integrated approach with wraparound services that conveniently meet the needs of the individual patient or family.

West will be seeing patients at the main clinic next to the hospital, and he’ll also be on a rotating schedule at the clinics in Wallowa, Enterprise and Joseph.

Generally, new patients have a short wait list, and after they are seen, patients have access to the county’s care provider portal.