Where Esteban Perez lives in Guadalupe, he can simply walk to the Marian Community Clinic in the Plaza de Guadalupe along Main Street. The 72-year-old former nightclub bouncer relies on the clinic for medication to treat his diabetes.
But soon, he’ll have to depend on his wife to drive him to Santa Maria, because the clinic won’t be there.
Elizabeth Snyder, a spokeswoman for Dignity Health—the California-based company that runs Marian clinics and hospitals in Santa Barbara County—told the Sun that the Guadalupe clinic is tentatively closing in the next month, and the health provider will be opening a clinic on Aug. 1 in Orcutt, along with a family services center and a lab that will be open to patients with no insurance.
The clinic’s medical doctor, Dr. Victor Guerrero—who Snyder said lives in Orcutt and has gained a following with patients throughout the region—will also be seeing patients there.
“I don’t agree that this clinic should be closing,” Perez said, speaking through a translator.
Other residents of the city, such as Dennis Apel, are concerned with the move because Guadalupe is a medically underserved area (MUA). The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services makes MUA determinations based on the ratio of primary medical care physicians per 1,000 people and the percentage of the population below the poverty level, among other criteria.
An area is given the MUA designation when it receives a score of 62 or less. Guadalupe received a score of 61, according to the Health and Human Services database.
Apel operates a charity organization known as the Catholic Worker and collaborates with Marian to provide basic medical services to people living below the poverty line in Guadalupe. Apel said many of the people he’s served recently are patients at the Marian clinic. He believes the clinic’s closure will cause some patients to fall through the cracks.
“The way the system is set up, it creates these hardships for the people who are sort of at the bottom,” Apel said. “If Marian puts two clinics in Orcutt, well, Orcutt has more resources than Guadalupe does.”
Apel maintains a good relationship with Marian and said that the company is doing all that it can. Marian spokesperson Snyder said the real need’s in Orcutt, where the majority of the Guadalupe clinic’s patients live.
“The real concern is that there are no real services in Orcutt,” Snyder said.
Only 14 percent of Marian’s Guadalupe clinic actually live in the city, according to Snyder. She added that patients in Guadalupe can simply travel to Marian’s clinics in Santa Maria, which are only 10 miles away.
But Apel said it’s not that simple. Guadalupe does have bus services, but a trip to Santa Maria and back takes a few hours. He said the loss of a clinic in Guadalupe matters because it’s a walking city that’s losing a valuable resource.
“In Guadalupe, you can walk everywhere,” Apel said. “We walk to the post office, the hardware store; we walk to the bank. When you lose a service like that, it’s a big thing.”
Ariston Julian, a Guadalupe City Council member and the facility director for Community Health Centers of the Central Coast (CHC) clinics in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, agrees with Apel, adding that the closure is going to stress other nearby clinics.
CHC has a clinic on 10th Street in Guadalupe, but Julian said the clinic is overloaded as it is.
“We’re pretty much maxed out right now,” Julian said. “We’re limited because of our facility size. We’ve talked to Marian and Dignity Health about how to provide more care.”
Julian said his organization is looking to hire more physicians at the CHC clinic, and it’s already happening. According to Snyder, Dignity recently met with officials from CHC and the clinic is adding two more practitioners.
“It’s really going to be much, much better for the community,” Snyder told the Sun. “Resources get diluted when you have two clinics. With one, you can staff it better.”
So, Guadalupe will have at least one clinic to serve its population of 7,000 to 8,000 people, but what about pharmacies? The Guadalupe Pharmacy, which was located near the CHC clinic, closed earlier this year with little to no notice, and all patient records were transferred to a CVS pharmacy in Santa Maria, according to Julian.
Both Apel and Julian expressed worry over the closure.
“Our concern was that people couldn’t get pharmaceuticals unless they drive to Santa Maria, and many don’t have transportation,” Julian said.
Apel said things were a bit more depressing than that, because the pharmacy was a part of the community for more than 20 years.
“This was very hard for me, because they had a relationship in the community that was on a first name basis,” Apel said. “I would rather use a family-owned business than a big box store, where you’re lucky you can get your prescription filled in two hours, and it’s often impersonal.”
The building where the old pharmacy existed can’t house another one due to a non-compete clause, according to Julian. But there will be another pharmacy opening elsewhere in the city, he said, adding that it should be open in the next two to three months.
Residents like Perez think the exodus of medical providers from Guadalupe is a sign that the medical industry is expanding and that there’s simply more business in Orcutt. But Snyder said that’s not true and that Marian’s Guadalupe clinic has never made money.
“We’re a nonprofit community hospital,” Snyder said. “People really hate when we take something away, but they will see by next January how much better this will be for the community.”
Staff Writer Sean McNulty assisted with translating for this story. Contact Staff Writer David Minsky at dminsky@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jul 2-9, 2015.