Trinity Community Health Care will celebrate 15 years of “Primary Health Care Service Regardless One’s Ability to Pay,” opening in Winnfield July 1, 2009, and expanding through the years to provide services in Grant, Bienville, Lincoln, Rapides and Avoyelles parishes.

Launched as Winn Community Health Center with 5 employees and one small office behind the old Sonic on the 5-lane, the health center has grown to include the 6 parishes with over 300 employees.  The name “Trinity” was adopted as the center expanded over time with multi-parish clinics.  In 2023, Trinity treated 144,000 patients, including those on Medicaid, Medicare, private pay and uninsured.  Since 2009, Trinity has served 850,000 patients.  Trinity has a $20 million annual payroll and over $55 million in assets.  

Services include primary care medicine, pediatrics, mental health and behavioral services, dental health, podiatry, pharmacy and at some centers, gastro-intestinal services.  They also offer diagnostic testing in eye care and diabetics.  Trinity has 40 school-based clinics in Winn and Rapides parishes, with some 12,000 students enrolled.

During the spring groundbreaking of the 3-story, 52,000 square foot headquarters in Winnfield of their multi-parish health center, CEO Deano Thornton explained that in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, he was mayor at the time and became acutely aware of the lack of local health care services available to Medicare patients.  

An answer seemed to lie in the Federally Qualified Health Center program which local individuals began to pursue.  In July 2009, Winn Community Health received that FQHC designation.  Thornton would resign as mayor to pursue this larger dream.  In the face of early observers suggesting that they “might be moving too quickly,” the CEO noted, “We now have 7 stand-alone clinics plus our 40 school-based clinics.” 

He told the Journal, “At Trinity, we want to bring more specialty services to our communities.  There are several expansion projects in the works that should be announced in the next few months.”

The new Winnfield facility is now under construction and is expected to take 18 months to complete. The first floor will house the pharmacy, pediatrics, primary care, behavioral health and radiology. The second floor will house oral health services, vision health services, and physical therapy. The third floor will house administration, billing, finance, IT and medical records for the entire Trinity network, along with a large meeting room and a commercial kitchen.