When doctors retire, SLO County patients worry: ‘Who’s going to take care of us now?’

Changing doctors is never fun.

But when you’ve been a patient of the same physician for years, even decades, that change can feel almost as traumatic as a divorce.

It’s scary losing someone else’s familiarity with and concern about your health, especially when that someone has, for a long time, been in charge of your care.

I remember when Husband Richard’s longtime primary-care physician (David McBride) and cardiologist (Steven Pontius) retired in the same year.

Talk about having abandonment issues!

Think about it. Other than your family, who knows more than your trusted doctor about your quirks and ailments, diseases, reactions and interactions, treatments and how well you do (or don’t) follow instructions?

On the other side of the coin, spare a mental hug for the new docs who step in after those legendary physicians retire. They must quickly get to know and treat patients who are adapting to a different medical practice and regime.

What happens when 2 longtime North Coast doctors retire?

Imagine the waves of angst caused in December when two longtime North Coast doctors with separate practices in different towns announced that they were retiring.

Not that their devoted patients begrudged Robert Gong, of Cambria, or Garry Kolb, of Morro Bay, their well-earned retirement after so many years — 35 years for Gong and 46 for Kolb. Far from it.

Being a small-town physician is a labor of love that doesn’t pay nearly as well as being a specialist in a big city.

Put a pandemic on top of decades of that kind of dedicated, often 24/7 care, and it’s no surprise than many doctors — and other healthcare professionals — are retiring or otherwise leaving their practices.

As Ron Yukelson of Wilshire Home Health said, the retirement of Gong and Kolb will leave “huge holes in their respective healthcare delivery systems.”

“Unfortunately, the solo primary-care doctor is largely extinct today,” he added.

I reached out to both doctors several times to get their comments on their retirements, but neither one responded to my messages, although Kolb’s wife, Alice Kolb, did return my call. Photos of the doctors, both of whom are past standard retirement age, were not available.

‘Who’s going to take care of us now?’ patients lament

While the patients of Gong and Kolb sincerely wish them well, many of those patients have been wringing their hands about their healthcare options.

Many of them took to social media and email to share their dismay, frustrations and reach out for advice and referrals.

Some even did so from afar.

In mid-November, Evan Caffrey of Washington, New Hampshire, suggested via email to The Cambrian that his family feels Kolb’s retirement “is newsworthy.”

His 89-year-old mother Ann Caffrey believes she started as a Kolb patient in about 1965, so it’s likely that her earlier care was actually in the hands of Kolb’s physician father, Karl Kolb, whose practice began in the late 1950s in the same building. Garry Kolb began practicing in July 1976.

“It’s the hardest thing to find a new doctor,” Ann Caffrey said by phone from New Hampshire on Jan. 5, “to try to replace the good service you’ve had in the past.”

When she learned of Garry Kolb’s pen ding retirement, which she called “a multi-generational loss” because many members of her family have all been patients of his —she said she felt “very sad,” even though she’s no longer his patient.

“His patients are going to miss him so much,” she said. “He was always so attentive, creative, giving a lot of attention. He was sympathetic without being silly.”

“As Morro Rock is to Morro Bay, Dr. Kolb has been a tremendous landmark to the citizens of Morro Bay and its surroundings,” Evan Caffrey wrote in an email to The Tribune. “May he enjoy the peaceful retirement he has so richly earned.”

Others mourned closer to home.

A grieving Kathy Unger said in a phone interview about her woes in trying to find a new doctor after years of being one of Gong’s patients that, after she opened the letter about his intention to retire, “I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Who’s going to take care of us now? What do you do? Who do you ask?”

On Facebook, I asked former patients about their thoughts, and got lots of comments from other former Gong patients. They lauded his medical skills, the amount of attention he gave to each patient and his “caring demeanor and dry sense of humor” noted by Laurel Renz.

Even after “we sold our store, we continued to drive ‘over the hill’ to see him,” she continued, and Gong “attended the surgery to replace my left hip in 2014.”

Jolene Firgins (a former Cambria resident whom many people know as the Jodi who inspired the Beach Boys’ song “Be True to Your School”) said from the late 1980s until 2003, she and husband Duff Firgins were among Dr. Gong’s first patients.

“He was really a great doctor. He took time and cared,” she said, and he did deep research to determine the proper treatment for Duff Firgins’ rare blood disease.

The respondents also recalled Gong’s other commitments to the community, serving as a coach, school board trustee, director on the Camp Ocean Pines board and more, including his decades as a still-active Cambria Tennis Club member.

Many said Gong had been, as 30-year patient and Cal Poly professor Dan Eller recalled, “more than a family physician and skilled diagnostician who always recommended the best treatment. ... he was and is a family friend.”

“I’m not looking forward to ‘breaking in’ a doctor at this stage in my life,” Ramona Voge posted. “He was the best.”

What’s next?

Neither of the medical retirees is leaving his community in a medical lurch.

Kolb is affiliated with Dignity Health, which is adding Jason Hull, a doctor of osteopathic medicine (DO), to a Morro Bay group that includes Dr. Laura Slaughter and Dr. Eric Maher, another DO.

Kolb is expected to continue treating patients until Hull joins the group, which is currently expected to happen Feb. 28, according to Alice Kolb.

“He’s really grateful to have been able to practice in a location that he loves, as far as a place to live,” she said.

And while his patients will miss him, “he’ll miss them, too,” she said.

Morro Bay also has other doctors, an urgent-care clinic and other medical practices, so Kolb’s patients have the option of transferring their records to another in-town physician or group. Morro Bay is about 12 miles from the nearest hospital in San Luis Obispo.

Cambria’s situation is different. It is twice as far from the nearest hospital in Templeton, and nearly three times as far from the San Luis Obispo hospitals.

Cambria’s 2021 estimated population of 5,647 is a little more than half of Morro Bay’s 10,511.

Gong’s retirement left the small town with the one full-time medical clinic open every weekday, the recently expanded and relocated Community Healthcare Center of the Central Coast office (CHC), manned for more than a decade by nurse practitioner and Cambria Citizen of the Year, Cesilia “Cece” Lomeli.

There are other offices that provide certain specialties, such as physical therapy, chiropractic and other services.

Coastal Pines Medical Group to launch soon

Meanwhile, plans for the Coastal Pines Medical Group are proceeding in Cambria.

Physician Dr. David Griffith of Cambria wrote via email Jan. 5 that he and his partner Dr. Jana Kokkonen Reed intend to start enrolling patients in February, aiming for a March opening of the membership-based, concierge practice that will occupy Gong’s former office.

Griffith and Reed, a San Luis Obispo native, plan to alternate days at the office.

He said the monthly enrollment rate will be $100 a month or $1,000 a year for an individual, $150 a month or $1,500 a year for a couple and $200 a month or $2,000 a year for four people, or single patients who meet Medicare requirements as being homebound.

Griffith has for some time had a one-man concierge practice in which he treated mostly elderly, incapacitated and terminally ill patients in their homes, a practice he’ll continue as a part of his Coastal Pines in-office hours.

For details about Coastal Pines, go to coastalpinesmedical.com or call 805-927-5673.

CHC’s new clinic is twice as large as former location

At CHC, Lomeli has the regular assistance of a physician — internist Dr. Benjamin Cooke has filled that slot for some time — plus Thursday chiropractic appointments (Dr. Gary Spunt is the new one) and the backup of a wide roster of CHC specialists from elsewhere in the county.

The new, 2,900-square-foot Cambria CHC clinic location near Gym One is where Heritage Oaks Bank used to be, at 1276 Tamson Drive.

The new clinic is twice as large and has twice as many patient rooms as the former Main Street location.

Lomeli said late last year that various specialists were waiting in the wings to be available at the Cambria clinic on a regular or rotational basis.

For details, go to www.chccc.org or call the service at 805-927-5292.