For more than two decades, Monterey Bay Urgent Care doctors, nurses and technicians have been treating patients for everything from the common cold and minor cuts and bruises up to more complex ongoing treatment for workplace injuries. The clinic developed a loyal base of patients, says Chief Operating Officer Madlene Moore-Condon, sometimes seeing more than 100 patients on a busy day with an average of about 50-60 daily at the clinic by Fisherman’s Wharf in Monterey.
Those patients will have to go somewhere else after Dec. 31, when the clinic shuts down and the doctors who founded MBUC in 1998 retire. The plan has been in the works for almost two years, after MBUC’s board of directors approached the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, a minority owner, asking to be bought out, according to Mary Barker, chief communications officer for Montage Health, the parent company of CHOMP.
The hospital agreed to buy the company’s equipment and furniture and take over the building lease, which lasts three more years. (Patient records were not part of the sale.)
Hospital officials agreed to help the 25 Monterey Bay Urgent Care employees find jobs within the Montage system, “a real blessing for the team,” Moore-Condon says.
Patients are being told of the upcoming closure and the clinic has already cut back on operations by closing on weekends. It’s now open weekdays from 7:30am-6pm.
“This is where people come when they have a situation that doesn’t need the ER, but it needs something, so I think it will be very bittersweet for residents,” Moore-Condon says.