PORT ANGELES — CliniCare, the only privately owned walk-in medical clinic in Port Angeles, was on the verge of closing this summer, owner and registered nurse practitioner David Kanters said this week.
But the clinic at 621 E. Front St., in Port Angeles may be saved by Dr. Jim Englesby, 62, the facility’s only doctor, Kanters said Wednesday.
Kanters and Englesby said they had “reached an agreement in principle” for Englesby to buy the business, which sees between 35 and 45 patients daily who suffer from colds to advanced-stage cancer — and who don’t need an appointment to see a health-care provider.
New development
“This just took place Sunday, and I’m really hopeful it will work,” Kanters said, adding he plans to stay at CliniCare but will focus more on nursing and less on the business of medicine.
Englesby, 62, a family practice physician and board-certified internist, said he expects a deal to be worked out by the end of June.
CliniCare treats Medicaid patients but is not taking any new ones, he said.
“There’s a whole lot of groundwork that has to go on first,” said Englesby, who began working at CliniCare in January, moving to the North Olympic Peninsula from Truckee, Calif.
“I have to be pretty careful at my age about getting into a long-term financial arrangement,” he said.
Founded by Kanters in 1989, CliniCare employs nine people, including two other nurses in addition to Kanters.
It generates annual gross revenue of about $1 million, but nets Kanters less than $100,000 after expenses “if we’re lucky,” he said.
He refused to divulge his asking price but said it’s “way under $500,000” and equal to “about the price of the equipment.”
“One way or another, I’m going to step down as CEO,” he said, making Aug. 1 a target date.
Things were looking grim for CliniCare on Sunday, when Kanters went from warning several businesses he may be closing the facility to reaching a tentative agreement with Englesby.
Unable to find a buyer, Kanters had faxed a one-page letter to about 20 businesses Sunday warning that he was “running low on options.”
“Rumor has been circulating that CliniCare is closing,” he said in the letter, adding, “If it comes to closing, know that it was not an easy decision.”
Kanters had wanted to sell CliniCare to his daughter, Ana Swanson, a newly graduated family physician who specializes in obstetrics, he said in the letter.
But a call-share arrangement could not be worked out with Family Medicine in Port Angeles that would have allowed Swanson to take some days off and not be on call 365 days a year, Kanters said.
“After months of negotiations, their solution was for me to close CliniCare, and she could work for them,” Kanters said in the letter.
Dr. Stan Garlick, the senior doctor at Family Medicine, said CliniCare’s lack of a computerized record-keeping system raised safety issues with patient care, making the call-share arrangement unworkable.
“We’ve known for 10 years that medical records need to be computerized and that it’s not really safe to have a paper system anymore,” Garlick said Wednesday.
“That’s crap,” Kanters responded.
“It’s under a federal deal to change to electronic records in the next couple of years. It’s just a matter of making a switch to accommodate each other.
“That was never cited to me as any kind of rationale. It would have been, ‘What does it do have electronic records? We have to do it anyway.'”
Kanters also approached Olympic Medical Center about the hospital buying CliniCare.
“In short, they were not at all interested or supportive, but they did wish us ‘good luck,'” Kanters said in the letter.
Offered assistance
In a statement, Assistant Administrator Rhonda Curry said the hospital “specifically offered financial assistance for the purpose of recruiting a new physician to the community to provide care in the CliniCare practice,” she said.
“However, with the challenging economics OMC now faces, specifically with Medicare and the Medicaid reimbursement cuts, OMC is not in a position to assume the CliniCare business at this time.”
If CliniCare does close, patients will be given at least 60 days to transfer their care to another doctor or facility, Kanters said.
Kanters said Primary Care is the only other private walk-in clinic in Clallam County.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.