Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
This letter is coming from a person with 35 years of rural hospital administration experience. I attended the city commission meeting on May 5 and was disappointed that nobody seems to be asking the right questions regarding this loss of a critical medical practice that has been involved in the care of thousands of women in the region for the past 35 years.
The main question is, how did we get to this point?
Presbyterian Healthcare could have assisted Women’s Medical Center in recruiting additional physicians to the practice. I believe that this assistance was requested, but Presbyterian chose not to provide that assistance.
Is it not easier to recruit two to three doctors to an established practice with a 35-year history, great reputation and a complement of nurse midwives than to start a practice from scratch by recruiting five new physicians to an office that does not exist? Of course it is.
Another option would have been for Presbyterian to employ the existing doctors and nurse midwives in order to secure their continued presence within the community. Then actions would be taken to build a practice around those dedicated providers who have already made a long-term commitment to the community and provided many years of excellent service. Again, why start from scratch when you already have physician residents of our community wanting to stay and serve? Presbyterian apparently said no to that option also.
And yet a third option existed. This option could have been instead of hiring five new, locum tenens (temporary) physicians, just contract with two in order to assist the physicians at Women’s Medical Center with call coverage while permanent recruitment was ongoing.
At the city commission meeting on May 5 we heard statements from hospital administration like “this is a huge lift in a short period of time,” “you just don’t replace a group,” and “our intention is to replicate what already exists.” Wow, why have such a heavy lift or replicate what already existed when other options should have been worked out?
Presbyterian is not coming in to “save the day.” This is now a crisis that should have been avoided. This situation should not have been a surprise to any of the healthcare administrators or medical officers.
Dr. Bruce Cross, unfortunately, passed away almost two years ago. Where was the planning back then to secure the future of this critical service for the community? Plains Regional Medical Center delivers more babies than all but five to seven hospitals in New Mexico. The support of the families at Cannon Air Force Base lead to the large number of deliveries at PRMC and the busy pediatric practices in the community. They have been let down as well.
What was once a strength of the local healthcare system will soon be a weakness. The OB/GYN group has been stable for many years and an anchor of the medical staff. Is this service to have the constant turnover of physicians that the pediatric service has experienced over the past several years?
PRMC has a board of trustees consisting of members of the Clovis community that is supposed to be representing the best interest of the community and act as a liaison with Presbyterian. Where has their leadership been throughout this whole process? Where has their adamant demand been to save Women’s Medical Center?
It just brings the question, should the medical decisions related to our community be made from Presbyterian’s headquarters over 200 miles away?
Vince DiFranco was administrator at Plains Regional Medical Center from 2015 to 2017. He still lives in Clovis. Contact him:
