Dalton mayor wants better low-cost clinic
City scraps contract with current facility and begins searching for a new operator
A low-cost clinic appears to be leaving Dalton in two months, but the mayor says the government will provide a replacement soon.
Steven Miracle, the CEO of Georgia Mountains Health, said Mayor Dennis Mock sent him a letter about two weeks ago, telling him the company’s clinic inside the Mack Gaston Community Center won’t be able to operate past July 31. The company has leased the space for $1 a month for the past five years, but its contract ends in eight weeks.
Mock said Miracle did not apply to renew the lease in time. However, he added, the real problem has been the quality of the clinic’s work. He said the clinic was closed during regular business hours 46 different times. Also, the city’s human resources department had to contact the clinic about problems several times.
Asked for more specifics about those issues, Mock referred the Times Free Press to Greg Batts, the city’s human resources director. Batts did not return a call or email seeking comment Thursday.
But Miracle said he had not heard from Batts in “quite some time,” and he was unaware of any ongoing complaints. He added that city officials had not spoken to him about the clinic being closed during the day.
“If there were ongoing issues,” he said, “I would have been aware of it. We’re a relatively small organization. I’m not saying I’m aware of everything; but if there was an ongoing issue, I certainly would have been aware of it.”
The four members of the city council did not return emails seeking comment Thursday. But Mock said they will meet in executive session at 5:15 p.m. today to discuss the situation. They are hoping to find a replacement for the clinic.
Miracle said the clinic is an asset for the city. Because of its $1-a-year lease, it provides lowcost treatment for patients without insurance and patients with high deductibles. He added that some people live close enough to walk to the clinic. The community center is at the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Fredrick Street.
Miracle said the only known issue with the city appeared to be about drug screenings. The clinic provided random drug screening for Dalton, as well as screening for applicants for new jobs and in the event of work-related injuries that would force workers to take time off.
However, sometimes problems arose when people got injured on weeknights after the clinic closed or on weekends. Miracle said the city had contracted with another company to handle those cases. Also, he said, the wait times for the drug screenings were too long at first, but the clinic eventually became more attentive to city employees.
“If there’s dissatisfaction [with the drug screenings], let’s have a consequence that’s appropriate to the dissatisfaction,” he said Thursday. “Not renewing the contract seems above and beyond the dissatisfaction of a service. Nobody has had a complaint about the quality of the medical care we provide.”
He said patients have developed relationships with the clinic’s physician, Wylie Smith.
Gregory Dent, executive director of Northwest Georgia Healthcare Partnership, said city residents have other options with volunteer clinics around town. His organization is also going to help the city find a replacement to staff the clinic in the community center.
Mock said the city could wind up retaining Miracle’s clinic, if that’s what the other members of the council want.
“If we couldn’t find somebody else,” he said, “we’d rather have, I guess, bad service than no service.”
Miracle said he’s hopeful his clinic remains. But he’s not holding his breath.
Georgia Mountains Health hosts medical and dental clinics in five locations in North Georgia. A nonprofit organization, it has received $15.5 million in revenue and spent $16.1 million from 2013-15, according to tax forms available online.
Of the revenue, $9.3 million came in the form of grants and contributions. The nonprofit business averaged about 11,000 patients per year during that time, with Miracle estimating that between 1,200 and 1,500 patients used the clinic in the community center.