The Osage Nation Health System is awaiting new plans from the Madison, Wisconsin-based Erdman Architecture for a new Skiatook Primary Care expansion facility, a satellite clinic coming between the months of December 2026 and February 2027.
“Skiatook is … a small ‘health desert,’ so to speak, for tribal members of various tribes living in that region,” said ONHS CEO Mark Rogers.
“We were one of the lucky few awarded the base grant and the extra allocation,” Rogers said, referring to $3.5M awarded from the Indian Health Service (IHS) Small Ambulatory Grant (SAP) for a new clinic in Skiatook. They could have received only $3M, Rogers said, but the strength of their application won them an extra $500,000 in grant money.
Skiatook is ‘underserved’
The underserved area for Native American patients will see the new clinic announced soon via a sign southwest of the Osage Casino in Skiatook, Rogers said.
Near the intersection of Highway 20 and NW 56th Avenue and slated for roughly 8,000 square feet, the new Skiatook clinic is still in the design phase, but a groundbreaking could happen as early as the fall of this year, Rogers said.
The clinic will have a “unique patient experience,” said the ONHS CEO. “We will have referrals, especially. Services that are beyond just a standard clinic.”
Rogers specified that such services may include “dental and pharmacy,” although nothing is confirmed yet, he said, as the board has not yet received or approved the architectural plans.
According to a May 30, 2025, Membership Office report, more than 600 Osages are living in Skiatook, which, according to the latest U.S. Census, has about 8,500 residents. For the first time, the Skiatook Osage community has surpassed that of both Fairfax and Hominy, making it the second-largest Osage-populated city behind Pawhuska on the reservation.
Currently, the city of Skiatook has four clinics: Ascension Medical Group St. John Skiatook, Access Urgent Care-Skiatook, Holiatry Health and Wellness LLC, and Skiatook Family Clinic. The Osage County Health Department also maintains a public health office in Skiatook, providing family planning, screenings, immunizations and WIC outreach. Additionally, Skiatook is roughly 15 miles from the larger city of Owasso and about 22 miles from the city of Tulsa.
‘Superior to the private sector’
The potential expansion of the ONHS dental program, as well as the pharmacy, would mean superior accommodations to the private sector, according to Rogers.
The Skiatook clinic will require between $5.5M and $6M in additional funding beyond the awarded grant. Rogers noted that the SAP grant already requires matching funding, and no matter what, they would have had to allocate more than a matching $3.5M.
“[It] was going to take extra funding to just get a simple small clinic built, but evolving analysis and growth data reveal the need for a bit more robust offering,” Rogers said. “So, since we are going to have to match the [$3.5M] grant anyway, option two made sense to put forth as a better community need meeting services option.”
ONHS will be offering its customer service and other services to an area where “nothing currently exists,” Rogers said. More information will be released once plans are finalized.
The ONHS Skiatook Primary Care clinic is expected to be completed by winter 2027, or as early as December 2026. Look for a ‘coming soon’ sign southwest of the Osage Casino.
