SLO County medical clinic closing amid coronavirus pandemic
Although the landlord and Cambria’s healthcare district haven’t yet received formal notification, it appears that the First California Physicians Partners Cambria clinic will close soon — right in the midst of a coronavirus pandemic.
Some concerned patients said that they’d received letters informing them of the change that’s due to take effect May 1.
Cambria is a fairly remote, small coastal village with a population of about 6,000 residents, most of whom are baby boomers or older.
The town has limited medical facilities. The nearest emergency or urgent care clinic is in Morro Bay and the closest hospitals are in Templeton and San Luis Obispo.
According to Barbara Bronson Gray, secretary of the Cambria Community Healthcare District, “we do think this is a really bad time for FCPP to do this during the pandemic. If they could give us more time to find a solution, we’d really appreciate it.”
Gray said she’s puzzled by FCPP’s apparent decision to shut the Cambria clinic.
“By all accounts, the practice was doing very well. … it was thriving,” she said, and the physician was having to limit to four the number of new patients she could add per day.
However, Gray said, FCPP apparently “thinks it’s necessary to do what so many providers are doing, merging two or more physicians together to sustain the overhead” of maintaining a clinic.
As of Friday, Gray said the healthcare district hadn’t yet gotten any official confirmation from FCPP about the closure, but that she’d heard about it from various reliable sources.
Ara Najarian, communications specialist for Tenet Health Central Coast, which is affiliated with FCPP, said he didn’t yet have a formal statement about the future of the clinic.
However, he said via email March 27 that “I did find out that the physician is moving her office to Paso Robles.”
It’s not known why FCPP would move popular doctor Alison Lewis, but keep the practice open. The letters to patients simply referenced “unforeseen circumstances.”
The FCPP’s Cambria practice at 2150 Main St. opened in 2019 in a medical facility once occupied by a variety of tenants.
With the expected closure on the horizon, the healthcare district’s healthcare advocacy committee “is working to resolve this as quickly as we can,” Gray said.
Members of that committee include Gray and district director Laurie Mileur. The healthcare district board also has a new member: Cecilia Montalvo was appointed in March to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of previous director Miguel Hernandez.
According to the notification letters, FCPP will move Lewis’ practice to the corporation’s Paso Robles location on Buena Vista Drive, near Golden Hill Road.
John and Renee Linn, who own the Cambria medical building in which FCPP operates, had worked long and hard to bring the clinic to town and remodel the building’s interior to suit the partnership.
As of March 27, the Linns hadn’t had any “official comment or notification” from FCPP, she said. “But we’ve heard it through the grapevine.”
The Linns are well protected by a “very strong lease,” she said, and like the healthcare district, they’ll will wait for the formal announcement to see what happens next.
“I got pretty upset about it last week,” Linn said, but now, “I can’t worry about it too much. We’ll have to see what transpires next. Sometimes good things happen from bad ones.”
That’s the tack that Gray is taking, too. She took part March 26 in the first of several conference calls with about 18 county and local leaders about North Coast healthcare needs, which she said include choices for primary care, lab services, urgent care, telemedicine and home care.
There are other medical services in Cambria.
For instance, the Sierra Vista blood-draw lab that has been located in that same medical building for decades will be staying there, according to staffers. For April, the lab will be open Mondays and Wednesdays, they said.
The office of physician Robert Gong is located in the same building. There’s also a busy Community Healthcare Center clinic at 2515 Main St., led by nurse practitioner Cesilia Lomeli, and the boutique practice of physician David Griffith.
This story was originally published March 30, 2020 at 12:39 PM.
