BERNE — Hilltown Healthcare is on the move, with family nurse practitioner Jill Martin, who owns one of the only practices serving the Hilltowns, authorized to build a new office at 1705 Helderberg Trail — just a jump away from the current office, at 1772 Helderberg Trail. 

Martin did not respond to Enterprise inquiries about the reason for her change in location, but a building permit application she submitted to the Berne Planning Board last month, obtained by The Enterprise through a Freedom of Information Law request, states that the structure will be 1,860 square feet, referring to it as a “new permanent location for Hilltown Healthcare.” 

It will be a one-story ranch with “siding giving the appearance of a historic 2 story colonial with hidden parking and patient entrance,” the application states. Construction is scheduled to start on April 1. 

Hilltown Healthcare currently operates on a parcel owned by James and Kimberly Conklin, according to the town assessment rolls. They had purchased the property in 2015 from Dr. Gary Kolanchick, M.D. — who has since moved to Maine — and until 2019 it hosted Capital Care Family Practice, owned by Community Care Physicians and run by Dr. Kristin Mack, D.O.. 

The Conklins could not be reached to discuss their plans for the property once Martin leaves.

Mack left the Hilltowns at the end of June 2019, and the community was temporarily without a medical office, except for a Westerlo micropractice owned by Dr. Myria Emeny, M.D., that had no chance of taking on the 1,900 displaced patients.

Community Care, which closed the Berne practice, offered to transfer patients to offices in Guilderland and Slingerlands, but Martin, who worked for Community Care, stepped up and offered to run a practice herself, opening it six months later, in December, 2019.