Two rural health clinics in Washington County, Va., will close, probably within 90 days, Stone Mountain Health Services CEO Malcolm Perdue confirmed Thursday.
Perdue said the nonprofit company’s medical clinic in Mendota and dental clinic in Damascus simply lack enough patients to make them financially viable.
“There’s not enough patients showing up at the clinics to justify keeping them open,” Perdue said. “Every community would like to have their own doctor and their own dentist, but that is not an economic reality.”
He said Mendota’s proximity to Bristol and the proximity of Damascus to Abingdon could be part of the reason some people drive outside those communities for medical and dental care rather than use the community clinics.
Stone Mountain operates 12 medical clinics, four dental clinics and two respiratory care clinics in Southwest Virginia.
Perdue said other rural clinics operated by the company – including its medical clinic in Damascus – are doing fine and will continue to operate on a sliding fee scale.
Stone Mountain will do what it can to help patients at the Mendota medical and Damascus dental clinics find new providers, he said.
In Mendota, a community that worked for years to raise the money to build a clinic, residents said the closure will leave a damaging void – and they hope someone else can be found to run it.
“There’s people that walk to it that have no other way to get to a doctor,” said Sara Campbell, a patient who lives in the nearby community of Benhams and has been using the clinic since it opened. “We really need our clinic bad.”
Campbell said she wouldn’t feel safe going to a doctor’s office in Bristol, where the waiting room is filled with strangers instead of friends and neighbors.
Mike Beaule, who lives in Mendota, said closing the clinic will be “a double whammy” for residents who are already struggling to make ends meet in a recession and will now face the added cost of traveling to find health care.
Known as the Mendota Medical Center, the clinic was initially run by Wellmont Health System, which announced plans to close it three years ago. Stone Mountain took over the operation then, but Perdue said it’s been operating in the red ever since.
He said the company has tried everything to attract more patients and make the clinic viable – but it hasn’t worked.
dmccown@bristolnews.com | (276) 791-0701
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