CRMC’s Wellington medical clinic to close doors

WELLINGTON – The only medical clinic in Wellington is closing at the end of the month, a victim of the economic downturn and a decision by the Cheyenne Regional Medical Center’s board of directors to refocus the Wyoming hospital’s mission.

The Wellington Medical Center, which opened at 7859 Sixth St. in the fall of 2006, will see its last patients on Jan. 23 and close its doors one week later on Jan. 30.

“It was really a twofold decision,´ said Kathy Baker, public relations manager for CRMC. “Part of it was due to the economic downturn and part of it was our board of directors decided to focus on our core services area, which is southeastern Wyoming and western Nebraska.”

Baker said the board decided to spend CRMC’s resources at its seven other clinics. “We offer outreach clinics to six communities in Wyoming and one in Nebraska,” she said. “We have so much going on at those other areas that we need to just focus there.”

CRMC – formerly known as United Medical Center of Cheyenne – built the 6,800-square-foot building in Wellington at a cost of $1.3 million. When the announcement of the new clinic was made in late 2005, then-hospital-CEO Charles Harms said he expected fast-growing Wellington would become “the largest city in our primary service area” within the next few years.

At the time, Poudre Valley Hospital System was also eyeing the town for a possible clinic and it appeared there might be two clinics established there within the year. But PVHS eventually decided against setting up a clinic in the town, according to Pam Brock, PVHS vice president of marketing and strategic planning.

“We did not establish a clinic there,” Brock said. “We looked at it for quite some time, but we looked at the numbers and decided it just wasn’t a good business venture for us.”

Brock said that doesn’t rule out a possible PVHS clinic at some point in the future. “The Wellington clinic at this time is not on our list of strategic initiatives,” she said. “I won’t say we’ll never look at Wellington but right now it’s not on our radar.”

Baker said PVHS wasn’t the only health-care provider in the region that was offered a purchase or lease of the Wellington clinic but she declined to specifically identify any others.

The clinic offered primary care to about 2,800 patients, Baker said, and those patients will be able to transfer their records to another clinic of their choice. She said no decision has yet been made as to what will be done with the building after it closes.

Other options

Wellington will still have some local health care providers after the clinic closes, including Wellington Eye Care and Wellington Family Dentistry.

Larry Lorentzen, Wellington town administrator, said the clinic will be missed. “It was actually helpful to have a local clinic here and it was a high priority for the town council to have it here,” he said.

Lorentzen said the council is hopeful another medical provider will take over the space on the town’s east side. “That would certainly be our hope,” he said. “I can’t see anyone purchasing it for anything else.”

Lorentzen said the growth of Wellington’s population – now an estimated 5,400 – has slowed in the last year due to the national foreclosure crisis and economic slowdown.

Meanwhile, staff at the clinic say they’re sad to see the relatively new building shut its doors. “It feels like they’re evicting us from our home,´ said Rose Harmor, patient care coordinator.

“This is a devastating thing for us,´ said Jessica Jaques, patient account coordinator. “We had a lady come in here today and she was crying. We have a lot of elderly patients who don’t have transportation (to go elsewhere).”

Jaques said she thought the clinic was doing fine until the news came that it would shut down. “We were seeing 10 to 12 new patients a week,” she said. “We were still growing, but I guess not fast enough.”

The clinic included a nurse practitioner, a physical therapist and a general care doctor, Andrew Hughes, who had planned to retire in the area but will now move his practice to Craig.

Hughes said he believes the clinic won’t be closed long. “I think the future is bright, but unfortunately it was kind of a perfect storm of the economy and bad timing for investment,” he said.

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