Citing increased costs, Midlands health clinics to close and layoff staff
Five community health centers in the Midlands are slated to close as a local health provider faces financial shortfalls.
Cooperative Health will consolidate several of its health clinics and lay off up to 80 employees, according to numbers submitted to the state Department of Employment and Workforce.
Those affected will include administrative staff for the health care provider and clinical staff at some locations, said CEO Jaeson Fournier.
“This is a financial necessity,” Fournier said. “After years of reduced funding and increased costs, we need to make changes for the long-term and be sustainable.”
Those losing their jobs include 64 full-time employees of Cooperative Health plus various on-call personnel, the CEO said. Providers at the closing clinic sites will be moved to neighboring locations.
The company will close its clinics at Lake Monticello and Ridgeway, which will be combined with the Winnsboro location; its Brookland-Cayce Medical Practice will move into a newer facility nearby; in Batesburg-Leesville, they will merge a pediatrics office with a women’s and internal medicine practice; and the Eau Claire podiatry office will merge with Cooperative Health’s main Eau Claire campus, while the provider there will move to Cooperative Health’s Five Points location.
All sites will close by Aug. 22, and the staff’s last day with Cooperative Health will be Sept. 12, said Fournier.
“We will continue work with our impacted employees during this difficult time,” he added, committing to giving 60-day notice to employees being let go and continued pay and benefits. “We want to help them find the next thing for them as best we can, given our limited resources.”
But the CEO was quick to say Cooperative Health is not in danger of closing down. Fournier heads the second largest health center of its kind in South Carolina, serving 50,000 patients a year. He hopes the patients at the closing sites will follow their doctors to the new locations, but said Cooperative Health can provide continuity of care if they choose other providers.
Founded by Dr. Stuart Hamilton in 1981 as the Eau Claire Cooperative Health Center in North Columbia, the clinic functioned as a nonprofit for impoverished and uninsured patients in the community. It now has a network of centers that provides a variety of services to patients in Fairfield, Lexington, Newberry and Richland counties.
But its operations were strained during the COVID-19 pandemic, and has seen a growth in uninsured patients at the same time the cost of providing health care has gone up. “Pharmaceuticals have gone up, no different than what we’ve seen at the grocery store,” Fournier said.
By “rightsizing” now, Fournier said Cooperative Center will be able to provide the same level of care for its patients into the future.
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