Clinics to Extend Medical Services

Hoping to fill a void left by the recent closure of the area’s only hospital, Ventura’s Community Memorial Hospital will expand the staff, services and hours at its medical clinics in Santa Paula and Fillmore.

Starting Monday, the facilities will also offer urgent care, staffed by doctors and others from the debt-ridden Santa Paula Memorial Hospital. It was shut down Dec. 19 and filed for bankruptcy protection three days later.

“These doctors know the community,” said Dr. Richard Reisman, medical director of Community Memorial’s Centers for Family Health.

Reisman declined to speculate on how many patient visits might be added by the action, but Ken Strople, the hospital’s interim executive director, said he expected the facilities would be popular.

Since the closure of Santa Paula Memorial, Strople said, “all the emergency rooms have been very, very busy. It’s not all due to Santa Paula, but we have seen an increase.”

The expanded clinics will offer some of the services available at emergency rooms, such as treatment for broken bones, lacerations and fevers. But both Strople and Reisman stressed that the clinics would not accept patients with life-threatening emergencies, which include major trauma and cardiac problems.

“It’s not an emergency room,” Reisman said. “The converse is that 80, 90% of patients who come to emergency rooms could be cared for in fully equipped urgent care.”

The clinics are at 242 E. Harvard Blvd., Suite C, in Santa Paula and at 852 Ventura St. in Fillmore.

The Santa Paula clinic will be open for urgent care from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. weekdays and 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. weekends and holidays. The Fillmore clinic will be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Dr. Logan Bundy, the former emergency room director at Santa Paula Memorial, will oversee the Santa Paula urgent-care clinic.

He will be joined by Drs. Jeffrey Tubbs, Michelle Daucett and Michael Tushla, all of whom worked in the emergency room at Santa Paula Memorial.

Community Memorial will add new radiology and lab equipment to both clinics and plans to expand treatment areas at the Santa Paula site.