PORT ANGELES — You can’t PAARC here anymore.
The PAARC Clinic, so named for the Port Angeles Association of Religious Communities, closed its doors at 510 Park Ave. on Thursday to uninsured and indigent people who need medical care.
Its replacement, the Volunteers in Medicine of the Olympics Clinic, won’t open until July 7 in remodeled quarters at 909 Georgiana St., next to the Klahhane Women’s Clinic.
That leaves the Olympic Medical Center emergency room as the only place poor people can seek free care.
Registered nurse Phyllis Hopfner and her husband, Dr. Edward Hopfner, opened the PAARC clinic in August 2001 after ending their professional careers.
When they started in the basement of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, the Hopfners treated only a few patients a week. At the end, they saw 40 to 45 people each Tuesday and Thursday afternoon.
“We want to retire,” Phyllis said as she prepared for the clinic’s final day.
“We’ve been at this almost four years. There’s not much more we can do.
“Besides, I want a summer off. We haven’t had any vacation time to speak of since the clinic opened.”
Others must care for the unemployed and uninsured, Phyllis said.
“We’ve demonstrated there is a need in the community,” she said.
“People don’t have money to pay doctors. Insurance is very expensive. I know my health insurance is very expensive.”
New clinic delayed
Dr. Bill Collins, board chairman of Volunteers in Medicine, said the new clinic had hoped to open March 15.
“Boy, oh boy, was that optimistic,” he said Thursday as he repaired a heating vent in the Georgiana Street cottage that will house the clinic.
Barriers have included remodeling the building, recruiting staff and finding volunteers.
“We’re still hard-pressed for physician, physician’s assistant and nurse practitioner volunteers,” said Collins, who retired three years ago as director of medicine at Olympic Medical Center.
Many retired doctors live on the North Olympic Peninsula, he said, but too few are the general practitioners that the new clinic needs the most.
Collins, an anesthesiologist, recently returned from the University of Kentucky, where he took training in family medicine so he can volunteer.
