Bobbie Barker panicked last week when she found out her physician assistant was gone.
Barker, 78, learned that Paul Ballinger no longer worked at Chickamauga Family Practice when she called the clinic's phone number and heard an operator inform her that the service closed Oct. 15 due to budget constraints for Hutcheson Medical Center. Barker then drove to the clinic, worried about what happened to her medical records.
"With all the sicknesses I have," she said, "you need those records. You never can tell. I've had cancer twice. I always try to keep me a good doctor."
In the end, the hospital resolved the issue relatively painlessly for Barker, who said she suffers from diabetes, high blood pressure and arthritis. A Hutcheson employee is still working at the shuttered clinic, where patients can provide their information in exchange for a copy of their records.
Hutcheson CEO Farrell Hayes said there is a backlog on the process because so many patients are trying to get copies of their records from the closed clinics in Chickamauga and LaFayette. Hayes said the process should take only a few days. And indeed, three business days after she applied for her records, a hospital employee called Barker to say she could pick up her records, she said.
Barker said her four medications last her only about 90 days, and a pharmacist had last refilled them Sept. 29. She was worried she would not retrieve her records soon enough to see a doctor and get a renewed prescription.
"Everything's all right," she said Monday. "Thank the Lord."
Farrell HayesWhile the hospital is handling a slew of requests for medical records from closed clinics, the line of former patients should soon increase. Ronald Glass, Hutcheson's trustee in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, announced Friday he will begin the process of closing down the hospital's main campus and cancer center this week.
Assuming a buyer does not purchase the hospital before the shutdown, Hutcheson's closure will cost hundreds of local residents their jobs. Don Oliver, the attorney for the Hospital Authority of Catoosa, Dade and Walker Counties, said at his last count the hospital employed about 350 people, including part-time staff.
That was after the hospital laid off about 70 people in October, which was after it laid off 58 people in September.
When the shut-down process is complete, more patients will need new doctors - and their old records - to continue filling their medications.
Hutcheson is responsible only for the records for staff members. Doctors and physician assistants who aren't Hutcheson employees, who are free to roam to different hospitals, maintain their own records.
If the shutdown occurs - barring a last-minute sale of the hospital - Hutcheson leaders will smoothly handle the transition of the medical records, Hayes said.
"We'll make everyone aware," Hayes wrote in an email.
According to the Georgia Department of Community Health's rules, the administrators of a closed hospital have to find a place to store old medical records. They have to tell the department where that place is and advertise in widely circulated local newspapers how former patients can pick up their records.
In Dade County, when the local government bought Hutcheson's Trenton clinic in September, the hospital employees brought the records back to the main campus, County Executive Ted Rumley said. About a month later, when Memorial Health Care System began operating that same clinic for the county, patients could call Hutcheson to get their records.
"They tried to make it pretty easy," Rumley said, "as easy as they could anyway."
In Walker County, local administrators are negotiating a deal to buy the Chickamauga clinic. Oliver, the county attorney there, said the price of the deal will be $350,000, just like Dade County's deal with Hutcheson. And, like Dade County, Walker County will bring Memorial in to manage the clinic.
Oliver said he sent the proposed lease to Memorial on Monday.
Contact staff writer Tyler Jett at tjett@times freepress.com or at 423-757-6476.