Medalia to shut Sultan's only medical clinic

SULTAN — Medalia Medical Group plans to close its Sultan clinic March 31 and move the staff to its Monroe office, seven miles west on Highway 2, beginning April 1.

The clinic, the only one in Sultan, is being closed to help stabilize the medical group's financial health.

"We recognize that this is a significant blow to the people who live in Sultan," said Dr. Earl Beegle, Medalia Medical Group's chief medical officer.

"In the seven years that the clinic has been there, they've become very attached to having good medical care right at their doorstep. But in order to be able to provide any medical care east of Snohomish on U.S. 2, we have to make this move for efficiency."

Officials at Medalia and Providence Everett Medical Center, its parent organization, said the closure is due to mounting losses at the Sultan and Monroe clinics. Estimated losses are more than $500,000 a year.

"The state of health care in Washington is serious," Beegle said.

"We're not immune to that. Our reimbursements from Medicare and (state) DSHS programs are so bad that we are losing money daily. It's forcing us to make some very unfriendly decisions."

Medalia has already merged its Mill Creek and Silver Lake clinics and is looking at other cost-cutting measures.

Medalia is a regional network of 16 sites and more than 61 primary-care providers. Beegle said the Sultan clinic has a staff of 21, including five physicians. There are at least eight doctors at the Monroe clinic.

But Beegle said there is room at the Monroe site to move the Sultan staff there. He said the company doesn't plan layoffs.

Beegle said he expects to lose some employees who decide not to make the move to Monroe or by normal attrition.

Staff members at the Sultan clinic said they were asked not to speak about the closure. Beegle said he thought it better that he be the one to answer questions so the information would be consistent.

Patients of the Sultan clinic, however, have been vocal about their opposition to the closure.

"I can't believe that they would do this to us," said Kathy Claussen, whose family members are patients of Dr. Mark Raney at the clinic.

"The clinic is the kind of place where you can walk right in and be seen. These people are wonderful. They are like family to us."

On Dec. 10, Claussen became fully aware of how valuable it was to have a clinic in town. Her son, Bryan, 16, was killed in a traffic accident on Highway 522. After the accident, she went into shock and began convulsing.

"My husband drove me to the clinic and got Dr. Raney, who came out to the car to get me," she said. "The clinic was closed for the lunch hour at the time, but that didn't matter to them.

"That's the kind of care you only get at a small clinic where they know every patient and every member of every family."

Debbie Copple, whose husband, Brian, is a chiropractor with an office in Sultan, said she understands that the medical business is going through tough times. But closing the clinic doesn't make sense to her.

"They just got done buying first-class, brand-new everything," she said. "The clinic is packed all the time. How can they not be making money?"

Copple said many local residents hope the clinic will stay and find a partner other than Medalia to operate it.

Beegle said Medalia officials would listen to such ideas. "We even went searching for other partners ourselves," he said.

"We were talking with Monroe Valley General Hospital, and we researched rural medical grants, but nothing could be worked out. I don't know where a knight in shining armor with a big checkbook will come from, but we're open to all potential discussions."

The clinic has about 1,400 patients and tallied 18,100 patient visits last year.

Its closure will happen days before Group Health's Monroe clinic is shut April 4. That clinic, too, is closing to cut costs, according to Group Health officials. Group Health's closest clinics to Monroe are in Lynnwood and Everett.

The majority of the patients at the Medalia clinic in Sultan are expected to switch to the Monroe clinic, Beegle said.

"It won't be the same for them, and we know that," he said. "But they'll have to adjust, unless they want to drive a lot farther for medical care."

Leslie Moriarty: snohomishcounty@seattletimes.com.