There was an angry confrontation in Creston today as patients of a medical clinic went after the people they say shut down the operation.
Last month, the accountants who operate the Osprey Medical Clinic changed the locks on the doors, saying the clinic was losing money.
That left the three doctors with nowhere to practice, and when the dispute dragged on, the doctors sued, claiming the accountants owe them almost $45,000.
One doctor is so fed up that he is leaving.
The clinic served 3,000 patients.
Resident Shelly Campbell said when she first moved to the town it took her a year-and-a-half to find a doctor. She is a patient of the doctor who is leaving. “There’s a shortage of doctors as it is in this community,” she said, “and overall it doesn’t help our town if there was ever doctors wanting to come to our town.”
On Friday, angry patients, some of them cancer patients, confronted one of the accountants who shut down the clinic.
“We are the people OK?” said Campbell. “And we need doctors in this town!”
Clinic operator Ken Gadicke said he is frustrated as well. “There’s nothing we would like better than for a resolution to come that would see the doctors back in the clinic or a clinic in Creston and seeing patients again,” he said. “Where this ends or how this ends we’re not exactly sure. I’ve been essentially instructed to say it’s with the lawyers at this point.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article stated these were the town’s only doctors, but there are more than three doctors in Creston.
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