Top Milwaukee health official monitoring Children's controversial plan to close Metcalfe Park clinic
Milwaukee’s health commissioner has been keeping an eye on plans by Children's Wisconsin to close a doctors' office in the northside Metcalfe Park neighborhood, but ultimately said he doesn't have much influence over Children’s decision.
Health Commissioner Mike Totoraitis made the comments to a reporter Thursday, as activists continue to push Children's Wisconsin to keep open the primary care office at Next Door Pediatrics clinic. Children's has shown no sign of changing its decision.
Children's plans to stop accepting doctor's appointments at Next Door Pediatrics after Dec. 8, though the clinic will continue to see dental patients. The pediatricians based at Next Door are expected to move to other Children's Wisconsin clinics in the Milwaukee area. Children's is working to transfer patients' care to other pediatric offices in the Children's network.
Children's has said it made the difficult decision to close the office because of "space and size constraints" at the clinic that "do not allow us to consistently deliver the services our patients require."
“Providing more services in a single, larger location is more convenient for families and increases the opportunities for integrating care experiences,” Children’s said in an earlier statement.
Critics of Children's Wisconsin's decision to shutter the primary care office met outside Children's corporate office in Wauwatosa on Friday to protest the decision and call on Children's to delay the closure for at least a year to allow for community members to give input. One of their major concerns is that the clinic is located in the middle of a lead poisoning hotspot, where up to one in four young children tested for lead are found to have elevated levels in their blood.
Totoraitis, who was notified on Oct. 5 of the planned closure, did not seem concerned that the loss of the pediatrics office would hurt efforts to combat lead poisoning in that part of the city.
In an interview, he said the next-closest Children's clinic, Midtown Pediatrics, is three miles away and that Children's has "heavily invested" in health navigators to help kids and their families overcome barriers to health care related to transportation, housing and other factors. He also pointed to ongoing efforts by Children's and the city to expand screening of children for lead poisoning.
"I think part of their argument, which to me makes sense, to move to Midtown is that it can offer more holistic, full spectrum of services,” he said.
But critics of the decision worry that transportation and other barriers will prevent some of the more than 1,700 primary care patients of Next Door Pediatrics from going to Midtown or one of the other nearby Children's clinics, such as Good Hope Pediatrics in northwest Milwaukee or River Glen Pediatrics in Glendale.
In a study conducted by Children's and cited by protestors on Friday, transportation was identified as the most common reason why patients missed medical appointments, according to its most recent community health needs assessment.
"They know better than to put three or four extra miles between a child who needs health care and their doctor or their nurse," said Jamie Lucas, executive director of the Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, at Friday's protest. "They know better than to create an additional 45-minute bus ride just to get to that clinic that used to be right next door."
In statements, Children's has said it is working to find solutions to concerns about access to transportation for families of patients at the Next Door clinic.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Health commissioner Totoraitis keeping an eye on Metcalfe Park clinic
