HELPcare Clinic is Coming to Albert Lea!

I'm excited to announce that HELPcare Clinic will be opening an office in Albert Lea in early 2026.

We signed a lease earlier this week for space in Skyline Plaza that formerly was the home to the Albert Lea VA Outpatient Clinic. 

This space is ideally suited for our needs because that’s how it was designed. The sinks and fixtures are already there, so we will need only minimal modifications. Our landlord has been extremely accommodating in making this work.

We can start seeing patients soon, and we have plenty of room to grow, because the space is bigger than what we have at our original site in Austin.

Dr. David Strobel, M.D., and I opened HELPcare Clinic Austin in February 2022. Four other practitioners have joined him in the practice, and two more have been hired to help start HELPcare Clinic Albert Lea. This will be the third HELPcare Clinic location, as the Rochester office opened in 2023.

HELPcare Clinic is southern Minnesota’s first and only direct primary care (DPC) clinic, which means it relies on membership dues instead of insurance, reducing unnecessary administrative costs and sharing savings with members. 

HELPcare Clinic currently has more than 1,850 members, including 69 who live in Albert Lea and 158 more who live closer to Albert Lea than to Austin.

For the last several years, Albert Lea area residents have shown strong desire for health care alternatives. More than 5,000 had switched their primary care to MercyOne by August 2023, but then MercyOne left Minnesota. With Mayo ExpressCare in HyVee now closed, the need for new services in Albert Lea has never been greater.

For our first year, HELPcare Clinic served mostly retail customers, as individuals purchased memberships for themselves and their families. In addition, some employers who could not afford health insurance purchased memberships for their employees, providing a significant health benefit at a fraction of the cost of a full health insurance plan.

Starting in 2024, we began offering Health Insurance with HELPcare, working with North Risk Partners to develop employee health insurance plans built on the foundation of HELPcare Clinic membership.

Mower County developed a health plan for 2025 based on HELPcare Clinic membership that saved taxpayers $700,000 in 2025 while providing $0 out-of-pocket primary care services to county employees and their dependents. Its premium increase for 2026 was 5%, while increases for other southern Minnesota counties averaged 13%.

The first corporate client for HELPcare Clinic Albert Lea will be New Richland Care Center, which is adding HELPcare Premier membership to its employee health benefits plan, developed by Albert Lea-based Intellicents.

Join us Nov. 20 for the HELPcare Community Kickoff!

We'll be announcing the opening date for HELPcare Clinic Albert Lea at a special HELPcare Community Kickoff on Thursday, Nov. 20 at Wedgewood Cove. Co-sponsored by the Minnesota Chapter of the Free Market Medical Association, the event will include a screening of the documentary, It’s not Personal. It’s just Healthcare.

Following the screening, we will review HELPcare Clinic membership options, including a special Early Bird rate for HELPcare Premier that will only be available until HELPcare Clinic Albert Lea begins seeing patients. 

Admission to the HELPcare Community Kickoff is free, but reservations are required. 

Call (507) 873-5309 for more information about HELPcare Clinic Albert Lea, or complete this form to receive updates:

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Lee Aase

Lee Aase is the founder of HELPcare LLC, which provides comprehensive membership, marketing and management services for provider-owned HELPcare Clinics, as well as metabolic health education and coaching for people interested in restoring health and reversing disease through lifestyle changes. Lee and his wife Lisa live in Austin, MN and have six married children and 19 grandchildren.