PORT ANGELES — CliniCare, the only privately owned walk-in medical clinic in Port Angeles, will close in about two months, its owner announced Wednesday.
Founder David Kanters, an advanced registered nurse practitioner, said negotiations to sell the clinic at 621 E. Front St., have failed.
“I am sorry for the community that it has come to this and the hardship it will cause some people,” Kanters said in a prepared statement.
“It has been a privilege and an honor to have participated in your health care these past 22 years.”
CliniCare gets 35 to 45 visits per day — more than 12,000 per year — from patients with everything from colds to late-stage cancer.
Patients don’t need an appointment to see a health-care provider.
Kanters made several attempts to sell the business this year.
The clinic was on the brink of closure last spring when Dr. Jim Englesby, the facility’s only doctor, “reached an agreement in principle” with Kanters to buy the business,” Kanters said Wednesday.
“That isn’t going to happen,” Kanters said.
“It’s not my fault, it’s not his fault.”
Englesby, 62, said he will work at CliniCare two more weeks, then look for other employment.
Englesby said Wednesday he did not want to be locked into a minimum four-year lease to buy the practice while paying two mortgages and putting his two children though college.
“The numbers just aren’t there,” he said.
“You could work real hard and lose money. The problem is, reimbursement rates for primary care. They are awful. It was too big a risk.”
Effective immediately, CliniCare will not accept new patients, nor will it accept patients who haven’t been to the clinic in the last two years.
The clinic also has served notice to insurance companies about its intent to close in 30 to 60 days.
Hours and days of operation will fluctuate depending on staff. Tentative hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Monday through Friday.
The clinic had been open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays and on holidays and had provided on-call, after-hours care to anyone who called the clinic.
In addition, as of Oct. 1, CliniCare will no longer handle drug screenings, physicals or Labor and Industries claims.
Much of his staff has already found other employment, Kanters added.
CliniCare employed nine people, including Englesby and two other nurses in addition to Kanters.
Sandra Ramsey, practice manager at Primary Care Sequim & Walk-In Clinic called CliniCare’s pending closure “a huge loss.”
The Sequim clinic, at 520 N. Fifth Ave., does drug screens and accepts Molina health care for the working poor, Medicare and Medicaid, as did CliniCare.
CliniCare being open weekends and providing on-call care “keeps people out of your emergency rooms who don’t truly need to go to an emergency room,” Ramsey said.
Primary Care Sequim is open from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, “with the future goal of Saturdays” at the beginning of 2011, she said.
Kanters, who founded the business in 1989, was unable to find a buyer last spring.
He faxed a letter to about 20 businesses warning that he was “running low on options.”
He wanted to sell to his daughter, Ana Swanson, a newly graduated family physician who specializes in obstetrics, he said in the letter.
But a call-share arrangement could not be worked out with Family Medicine in Port Angeles that would have allowed Swanson to take some days off and not be on call 365 days a year.
Olympic Medical Center told Kanters in May that it could not take over CliniCare, citing challenging economics.
Kanters said he will remain rooted in Port Angeles but will likely explore other pursuits, like working with his search-and-rescue dog.
“I do enjoy the work,” he said. “It’s been fun.”
________
Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
