Local health clinic says ‘goodbye’
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ST. IGNATIUS — The last business day of 2010 didn’t start differently from any other day for the staff of Mission Valley Health Clinic. But it was bittersweet for physician assistant Randy Trudeau and his office staff as they prepared to close the clinic’s doors for the last time on Thursday.
“I’m sure it hasn’t really sunk in yet (for me),” said Trudeau, who’s owned and operated the clinic since June 2006. “It’s been really tough saying ‘goodbye’ to patients, because I’ve been taking care of them for 15 years.”
Before opening his private, general family practice clinic, Trudeau, along with office nurse Bev Hafliger, LPN, and office manager Sabrina Castor, worked at another clinic in St. Ignatius for a decade. In a rural area, it’s easy to grow close to the people to whom you provide healthcare, Trudeau said, and the relationships he’s developed with patients and their families over the past 15 years are what he’ll miss most. People Trudeau treated as teenagers are now bringing their children to see him, and he’s disappointed to have to close his doors, but economic troubles and Trudeau’s own health issues left him no choice.
After he receives the treatment he needs, which could take weeks or months, he hopes to “resurface elsewhere.” He hoped originally that hospitals in Missoula or Kalispell would lease the Mission Valley Health Clinic so it could stay open until Trudeau could resume his full duties, but that didn’t work out due to political issues, he said. And with no partners in the business to take up the slack with Trudeau gone, closure was the only route left.
“It is hard to say ‘Goodbye,” he said. “You kind of find out how much you meant to different people.”
And he and his staff want their patients to know how much it’s meant to be able to care for them for so long.
“I just want to thank everybody for their faith in our ability to give them good healthcare,” Hafliger said. “And hopefully, we’ll be seeing them (down the road).”
Copies of charts are available for patients to pick up at Mission Valley Health Clinic until Jan. 17, when they’ll be transferred to First Choice Medical Walk-In Clinic in Missoula. Patients can call the Mission Valley Health Clinic at 745-8765 and First Choice at 721-9543 for more information. First Choice is located at 702 SW Higgins Ave., Suite B, in Missoula.
