A clinic headed by the Wellstar College of Health and Human Services closed Friday, July 19, due to a “combination of factors,” according to a statement released days before by KSU.
The clinic opened in 1998 and required roughly $200,000 annually to operate, an amount that Richard Sowell, dean of the Wellstar College, said was too costly for the university to continue funding. “We will find other ways to continue our collaboration as both of our institutions move forward,” Kennesaw State President Daniel Papp said in the statement. “I am sorry that we must take this action, but a combination of factors has led to this decision.”
Ike Reighard, CEO of MUST Ministries, said KSU’s School of Nursing provided invaluable resources for those in need who used the clinic. “We were sad to see it end because [KSU] was very professional in the way they handled everything.”
“We thought up until late June that they would be continuing,” Reighard said. Following the news that a long- time employee at the clinic would be leaving, and with funds running out, KSU had no option but to cut the project.
MUST Ministries provided the office space for the clinic but nearly everything else was provided by KSU. When the university’s support ended, the clinic was forced to close its doors.
Money was collected primarily from donations, endowment funds and writing grants. Dr. Sowell said on the closure, however, that the clinic was run by a number of owners, which he called a consortium. “It progressed after I got here,” he said. “But some of our partners, for various reasons, left the consortium, which dwindled down until about 2002.”
“We realized afterward that we were providing most of the services. MUST was still providing a home for it,” he said. “And we were providing the rest of it.”
The real reason the clinic had to close, Reighard said, was because of the shift from a small trailer to a larger office complex from which the clinic operated. With this change came a broader focus, with more people seeking treatment than anticipated.
“The goal was, initially, to serve as some kind of conduit to treat people,” Sowell said. “And then place them in a more permanent situation with healthcare providers in the community.” But the patients became attached to the medical staff treating them, and many never left for a different provider.
So where will those without insurance turn now that the clinic is no longer an option? Reighard said that MUST offers no similar projects for the roughly 1,600 people from across the community who were registered patients at the clinic.
“It really put us in a bind,” he said. “We are in a search now for partners. We’re hoping and praying we can find some quickly. We were caught off guard, so we’re running in that direction right now.” As for KSU, any role in the future may be more academic.
“We’d be willing to support and place students in internships and have faculty volunteer, but it would not be the major role of having the responsibility of funding and running the clinic,” Sowell said.
