The Lighthouse Family Clinic stunned their more than 2,000 North Coast area patients last week when the staff there announced their doors will close for good on Friday, March 10. Tom Miller, the Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioner (ARNP) who opened the medical practice in Ocean Shores seven years ago, wrote a letter Feb. 15 notifying the clinic’s patients.

The clinic, located at 897 Minard Ave. NW, has canceled regular appointments and is seeing everyone on a walk-in basis until it closes. Miller especially urged his patients who are receiving prescriptions or who want copies of records to see him soon.

“I’m not dropping my license or anything like that,” he said, explaining that prescriptions will remain valid, but patients will still need to find new providers in the future. He said he plans to keep a phone line and answering machine going after the clinic closes next month.

Miller said the clinic has been operating at a loss the past two years, and blamed a mix of increasing regulatory costs and decreasing reimbursements from both government and private health insurance programs.

Miller said the health care business model has been changing since he first opened the clinic, from patient-driven to insurance-driven. “I picked the wrong time to be a provider. The days of the Normal Rockwell painting of the doctor’s office – that’s what I wanted to do… but those days are no longer here,” he said.

He also said the recent expansion of the Sea Mar Clinic in Ocean Shores had not impacted his Lighthouse Clinic. He said his practice has continued to grow in terms of patients and patients visits, but that’s been outpaced by the growing costs and declining revenues.

“Getting people in here and seeing them is not the problem,” he said. “It’s getting the reimbursement.”

Miller said he is not quitting medicine, is not leaving the area and in fact already has three job offers. One of the possibilities is a “clinic on wheels” business model.

“This has been the best seven years of my life, serving the people of Ocean Shores. I have to say; whenever you look at life, you look at chapters. This has been the best chapter of my life,” he concluded.

Changing signs

The city of Ocean Shores appears ready to take over a new billboard on State Route 12 just east of Aberdeen. It would end its current arrangement for the Ocean Shores sign that appears to be fading and hard to read on State Route 109 near Grass Creek.

Mayor Crystal Dingler noted the new sign would be lighted, unlike the current one that can’t be seen after dark.

“I think we need to refresh that sign,” Dingler said. “I think it looks kind of tacky out there.” The cost to redesign the existing sign would be about $350. It promotes Ocean Shores as a destination and was designed primarily to counter an older Seabrook sign. The city pays $450 a month for the space on SR 109.

The Highway 12 billboard sign is near Lake Aberdeen Road and would be seen by visitors heading west before they came into Aberdeen. That would cost $550 a month, and be much larger than the exisiting sign as well as having the advantage of being seen at night.

“We could change sign locations, or add another sign,” Dingler said.

She asked the City Council on Feb. 13 if they wanted to make the change, and all members indicated the mayor should move forward.

“The site of the Aberdeen sign is perfect,” Council member Bob Peterson said. “People coming this way are really going to see it.”

Sewer expansion

Ocean Shores also has begun discussions with the Quinault Indian Nation over extending city sewer service as far as Hogan’s Corner, where the tribe eventually would like to begin several development plans and has purchased additional property.

“I think that bringing sewer service to Hogan’s Corner is not all that far from the casino, where we already serve, and would be in the best interest of development out there,” Dingler said of the city’s extension to Quinault Beach Resort and Casino. The city also recently added the Illahee/Oyehut area to its sewer system under a Grays Harbor County project.

Sewer service, Dingler acknowledged, would make the “land more valuable and make businesses thrive out there.”