WELLINGTON — This small bedroom community in north Larimer County has a dog groomer, veterinarian, dentist and a gourmet chocolate shop.
But since Jan. 16, it has had no physician.
Dr. Andrew Hughes left when Cheyenne Regional Medical Center announced that it would close Wellington Medical Center at the end of the month.
Hospital officials said they had to leave Wellington — a town of more than 5,000 — because the patient load was too light while the costs of running the 3-year-old facility were too high. At its zenith, the clinic was seeing about 25 people a day.
“Our day-to-day volume was a little low, and with the economic downturn, we felt we didn’t have much of a choice,” said hospital spokeswoman Kathy Baker.
Rural Colorado has long suffered through a doctor drought. There are six counties in Colorado with only a part-time primary-care physician, and Crowley County is without a doctor.
Most young doctors avoid primary care in rural areas because of overwork, lack of resources, and low reimbursements from medical insurers, said Lou Ann Wilroy, executive director of the Colorado Rural Health Center.
“It’s not a recipe for success,” Wilroy said.
A Fort Collins doctor — Dr. John Bender of Miramont Family Medicine — hopes to take over the Wellington clinic on Feb. 2 with an experienced staff that would serve patients. Bender is aiming to have a primary-care physician at the clinic by July.
Many residents were stunned by the announced closure. They assumed the residents moving into homes springing up in and around the town could support a full-time doctor.
“We always thought as this community grows, we could finally get a clinic like this,” Ken Romero said. “I was heartbroken when I heard about this.”
Fort Collins is only about 15 miles to the south of Wellington. But for Romero, having to take his children to a doctor there would be a big inconvenience. He would have to take them out of school for much of the day and he would miss work to drive them to their appointment.
“This was really nice,” said Romero, who was the last patient to see the clinic’s outgoing family nurse practitioner, Jan Beltz.
Beltz is leaving to work in a specialty practice that will be closer to her home in Milliken. “I’m going to miss this place and these people,” said Beltz, who has been a nurse for more than 30 years. “These people really embraced this clinic and they deserve a place like this.”
Wellington suffers from the same afflictions as an isolated rural area — low patient traffic — while still being considered a growing suburb of Fort Collins, Bender said.
“When even bedroom communities cannot afford decent health care, that’s not a good sign for the whole economy,” he said.
Bender wants to expand the clinic, adding more hours as well as an in-house lab and an electronic records system.
The Wellington clinic now serves about 2,900 patients. Bender hopes to eventually increase that to about 4,000 by bringing in specialists and other services from his clinic in Fort Collins.
“We’re hoping to get the resources and tools to truly serve the town and the area around it well,” Bender said.
Most patients, when they heard Bender would resuscitate the clinic, decided to keep getting medical care there, said Jessica Jaques, the clinic’s patient-account representative. Jaques also will stay on.
“We all want to be true to Wellington,” she said.
Monte Whaley: 720-929-0907 or mwhaley@denverpost.com
