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(MINOT, ND) – Pledging support for its affected employees, Trinity Health announced it will close Trinity Community Clinic ñ Westhope effective December 8, 2017. The announcement came following an assessment regarding the clinic’s future amid declining reimbursements and the need to contain costs.

‘This has been a difficult decision, one that we actually delayed for quite some time,’ said Thomas M. Warsocki, FACHE, Vice President of Physician Services. ‘We’ve been in a prolonged period of declining reimbursements, and operating expenses at the Westhope clinic have exceeded revenues for some time. Given industry projections and critical priorities within our care system, we determined we could no longer sustain this resource imbalance.’

Warsocki said patients will be notified of the decision and provided with alternatives for continuing their medical care. Trinity Health has two other primary care clinics in north central North Dakota located in Mohall and Kenmare. He also said that every effort will be made to help ease the transition for employees displaced by the closure.

‘Trinity Health recognizes that without the support and loyalty of the staff, the clinic wouldn’t have remained open as long as it did,’ Warsocki said. ‘Dr. Kenneth Kihle and the clinic staff have been the heroes. They sustained the clinic and really took ownership of it ñ often going far beyond their normal duties to keep the clinic functioning and maintained.’

The health clinic has served the Westhope community since 2001 under the Trinity Health banner, offering primary care services to patients three days per week at the leased facility in Westhope. Its only physician, Dr. Kenneth Kihle, has also served patients at St. Andrew’s Health Center in Bottineau on a weekly basis.