Lacamas Clinic in Camas closing Dec. 15

Nearly three years after PeaceHealth acquired the Lacamas Medical Group in Camas, the healthcare provider has announced it is closing its Camas-based clinic effective Dec. 15. In a news release announcing the closure, PeaceHealth said it wanted to “maintain an optimal healing environment for all clinic patients,” and that providers would be relocating to other clinic spaces and reopening to seeing patients on Monday, Dec. 18. “Our focus is to ensure there is no disruption in patient care,” Richelle Bagdasarian, vice president of PeaceHealth’s medical group operations, stated in the news release. “We made the decision that this move is necessary in order to provide the best environment to care for patients.” PeaceHealth took over the former Lacamas Medical Group and renamed it Lacamas Clinic in early 2021, and said then that most of the staff and health providers had opted to stay with the Camas-based clinic. “Providing quality primary care services and expanding access to the Camas community is our top priority,” Dr. Chris Wheelock, vice president and medical director of PeaceHealth Medical Group, Columbia Network, stated in a January 2021 news release. Following the PeaceHealth acquisition, the Lacamas Clinic continued to provide occupational health services and expanded same-day and walk-in care, as well as primary care services, to the Camas-Washougal community. Since the switch, however, the clinic has received several one-star ratings on Google from patients seemingly frustrated by appointment cancellations and long wait times. “They were great until Peace Health took over. Now I cannot get a human at the office without waiting on hold and getting 3-4 transfer calls JUST to ask a quick question to someone in the office. It makes me so sad. The staff is amazing. The Peace Health management is taking out the personalized healthcare and trying to force us to do everything online. That is disheartening. When I am ill I don’t want to sit on the phone forever to get the proper care I need. Moving on to another place,” one reviewer wrote in 2021. Another patient wrote six months ago that their doctor was “very personable,” but said that was the only bright spot, adding that they had had ‘no long term care management. No follow ups. No physician notes for the nurses. No follow-ups, unless you have months to wait” and said the Lacamas Clinic was now their “last stop resort for care.” Four months ago, another patient left a one-star review of the clinic and said they wished they could leave zero stars. “I scheduled an appointment over two months ago. Today, after I got ready to go to my appointment and had my keys in hand, I noticed a missed call on my phone. They canceled the appointment less than an hour before the scheduled time and rescheduled me for October. My appointment was booked over two months ago,” they wrote on the Google review. “I’m a new patient, and this experience is completely unacceptable. If you treat new patients like this, it makes me wonder how you treat your current ones.” Another patient, however, advised people that providers at the Lacamas Clinic were “incredible” and urged prospective patients to look past negative reviews. “Ignore the reviews about not getting an appointment or call back. That’s not the physician, just operations. The medical assistants and physicians are incredible,” the person wrote two months ago on Google. “I guarantee you won’t find a better physician who genuinely cares for patients’ experience and takes any appropriate time necessary to visit and address issues.” PeaceHealth said this week that all of the providers at Lacamas Clinic are relocating to other locations and will see patients again as of Monday, Dec. 18, including Dr. Jordan Albrich, who is moving to PeaceHealth’s Fisher’s Landing Clinic in Vancouver; Dr. Michael Fong, who is opening the new PeaceHealth Mill Plain Dermatology Clinic at 15613 S.E. Mill Plain Blvd., Vancouver; and physician assistants Ben Panther and Sydney Spring, who are moving to PeaceHealth’s Union Station Clinic. PeaceHealth did not respond to requests for comment in time for this newspaper’s print deadline.

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