Wichitan Sharon Lawry is upset about losing her doctors because of the coming closure of the Wichita Falls Family Medicine Residency Program.

For at least a decade, Lawry and her 85-year-old mother have looked to the residency program for medical care putting patients’ humanity ahead of making a buck, Lawry, 52, said.  She wants to talk to those responsible for the program’s shutdown.  

“I want them to come forward. I want them to face me,” she said. “I want them to answer me and give me a legitimate reason as to why they have the right to take my health care, to take my physician from me.”

As many as 8,000 patients and about 24 residents will be affected by expected shutdown, effective at least by Aug. 31. Some say the closure does not bode well for the poor, vulnerable and people on a fixed-income. Others say local medical facilities will fill in the gaps.

Recent decisions by the United Regional Health Care System and the Community Healthcare System are expected to lead to the shutdown. Both health care organizations are cutting ties with the program, leaving it without its teaching hospital in United Regional and its management service in CHC.

Lawry wasn’t buying assurances from CHC Chief Executive Officer Allen Patterson and United Regional President Phyllis Cowling that affected patients will receive medical care.

“They’re lying to themselves as well as to the people,” Lawry said. “There’s no way possible that they could see all of those people.”

Lawry and her mother receive care at the Wichita Falls Family Health Center at 1301 Third Street in a program-owned facility. Lawry said residents there are trained in how to have a good bedside manner.

“The list goes on and on as to why I do not want to change my doctors,” she said.

She liked the services there so much that she persuaded her friend, Barbara Reese, to seek care there.

Reese, 71, has been receiving dialysis for kidney issues at a facility on Ninth Street, and she began going to the Family Health Center in May.

“I was just glad to be able to get in there, and now it’s closing. I don’t know what to do,” Reese said. “The doctor I had was so far out, I couldn’t get to him. I don’t have a car anymore.”

The Family Health Center is close to her home, she said. A Medicare patient, Reese has been on dialysis almost 10 years.

“I don’t have the money to pay for a kidney,” she said.

Reese was not looking forward to finding another physician.

“That means I’m going to have to start all over again,” she said.

Dr. Sampath Medepalli, a residency program graduate, said it will be a big loss for Wichita Falls when it shuts down because of the impact the program has, especially among the poor and indigent.

Faculty and residents are primary care physicians for as many as 8,000 people, including more than 250 who are homebound or in nursing homes, according to officials. 

Residents and faculty also provide women’s health care at the program's Wilson Clinic and indigent care, as well as providing care for the Wichita Falls-Wichita County Public Health District immunization, HIV and sexually transmitted disease clinics.

Patterson said the CHC could step in and take up some of the missions above although patients would at least part of the time see nurse practitioners and physician assistants instead of doctors.

Medepalli said he values his family medicine education in the residency program and finds others do, too.

“It would be very sad for me if it did end because I learned a lot being there, and I’m well respected now in my current situation because of the training that I got there,” Medepalli, who graduated about a year ago, said.

The program faced the threat of shutdown when Medepalli was a resident here in 2016, so he has some understanding of what the residents are enduring.

“We were able to rally the support of the local medical community,” he said.

The closure means eight first-year and eight second-year residents will have to find a new program in the midst of their education. In addition, eight new students slated to begin the program in July will have to find another residency.

The shutdown could lead to an interruption – possibly for years – of their education.

“A lot of people have been waiting a long time and put a lot of effort and tears and dollars to get to that point,” said Medepalli, an emergency room physician in Dayton, Ohio. “Just imagine if you’re one of those people who has done this and then your dreams are snatched away.”

Finding an empty spot in a program is a challenge, he said. All sorts of problems could crop up while waiting to get in.

“That could lead to depression. That could lead to people dropping out of medicine completely,” he said. “I really do feel for them.”

It took him three years to get into a residency program, Medepalli said.  

He knew of an applicant who tried for seven years to get in, he said.

In 2016, the residency program was at risk when United Regional planned to cut ties with the residency program. Without a training site, it can’t survive. Of concern was the program’s performance.

The CHC came on board to help build it up, and United Regional stayed on board. The program has full accreditation with no current citations and a 100 percent pass rate over five years, officials said.

“I think the residency program as it stands right now educationally is in the best shape that it’s been in,” Medepalli said.

He credited that to excellent faculty and the backing of the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth.

Patterson has said the CHC needs more money and substantially more control to continue its management services with the program.

Cowling has said the hospital system has goals of its own to accomplish and time, money and energy spent on leveraging the residency program to a continuing excellence would jeopardize those goals.