The La Plata Community Clinic, which opened a year ago, will shutter its doors March 28 – replaced by another operation with access to federal dollars.
The La Plata Community Clinic’s mission was noble, narrow and entirely dependent on donations: It aimed to provide affordable primary health care to a region where as many as a fifth of residents struggle to access medical services outside an emergency room.
The clinic is closing because Axis Health System opened La Plata Integrated Healthcare in Durango last month, and the clinic won the status of a Federally Qualified Health Center – and the federal dollars that comes with that designation, said La Plata Community Clinic manager Ginny Newman in a news release.
Axis’ new clinic, La Plata Integrated Healthcare, opened in January at a site north of the Durango Public Library.
Thanks to federal grants, Axis’ clinic is better positioned to fulfill La Plata Community Clinic’s mission.
Whereas La Plata Community Clinic counted on physicians donating their time and benefactors donating their money, Axis’ clinic has financial resources to care for the uninsured and the underinsured, provide enhanced Medicaid reimbursement and serve Medicare patients.
Bern Heath, chief executive officer of Axis Health System, said since La Plata Integrated Healthcare’s clinic opened last month, nearly all appointments have been filled.
Heath said with two full-time physicians, La Plata Integrated Healthcare is still a bit player compared with other local primary-care clinics.
But he said the clinic needs to enroll about 3,700 patients by the start of 2016 to comply with the terms of its grants.
“We’re working on that. While we haven’t had any open appointments, we are more than able and certainly welcoming of additional folks coming to the clinic,” either by appointment or as walk-ins, he said.
In the release, Newman said La Plata Community Clinic’s closure marks a bittersweet moment.
“We applaud Axis because La Plata County has desperately needed a FQHC for a long time,” Newman wrote in the release. “ ... While we would very much like to continue, we do not wish to duplicate efforts and funding for health-care dollars (that are) very limited.
“Until then, we are using our remaining funding for its intended purposes by helping those on our dental waiting list,” she said.
Newman said as La Plata Community Clinic prepares for the end, it is working on connecting patients to numerous health-care resources, including Axis’ La Plata Integrated Healthcare Clinic.
She said the organization is “assessing if there is another role to play in the community,” and hailed the difference La Plata Community Clinic had made to more than 400 patients “who received direct health and dental care” thanks to “30 caring professional volunteers who donate their time and with the help of generous donors and community champions.”
Axis’ Heath said La Plata Community Clinic’s closure does not amount to a defeat.
“At least from my perspective, I think they were a huge success,” he said. “This is not a defeat, or a negative: They filled a gap when there was nothing else to fill it.
“It took us ... three years to work through our (FQHC) application process before we were successful. Over that period, they served a lot of folks. It was a tremendous clinic,” he said.
cmcallister@durangoherald.com
