Doctors scarce in Sierra town of Groveland

In the Sierra Nevada, the air gets thinner and so does the supply of doctors for treating local residents.

People in this town on the Highway 120 route to Yosemite said the lone doctor serving their community is now seeing patients only two days a week at Groveland Family Medical Center. It leaves the retirees living in Groveland, Pine Mountain Lake and other settlements without a physician nearby most of the week.

Some residents are forced to take the winding highway “down the hill” to visit clinics in Sonora, 45 minutes away. Some seniors are not well enough to safely make an out-of-town trip, said Kay Crow, a Groveland resident.

“I have to go out of town to get medical help because there is not enough here,” Crow said. “It’s shameful we can’t get medical care up here.”

About six weeks ago, Dr. Steven Shield started working for an occupational health clinic in Sonora while continuing to take appointments twice a week at the Groveland center, operated by Sonora Regional Medical Center. The clinic serves Groveland and Pine Mountain Lake, which have combined populations of 3,400, as well as other residents in southwestern Tuolumne County.

Sonora Regional has tried for three or four months to recruit a physician for Groveland, said Gail Witzlsteiner, director of development and public relations. “It is difficult to find a physician, period, and is particularly hard to find one for a quiet, rural area,” Witzlsteiner said. “It needs to be just the right match.”

Groveland residents can thank the late Mary Laveroni for two essential services for Groveland: water and medical care. She helped secure water for the community from Hetch Hetchy reservoir and also donated the land for the Groveland clinic on Main Street. Her wishes were that the clinic provide health care for Groveland and the string of towns along 120.

Crow said there were two physicians here when she moved to Groveland about 25 years ago, but the town lost one of the doctors. The clinic had been open four days a week before Shield reduced his hours. He did not return a message from The Modesto Bee.

Laveroni’s daughter said there are more than enough patients to support the health center. “When I took my mother there (before her death in 2011), they were packed with people,” Mary Louzader said. “I don’t know why anyone would think it’s not lucrative enough to keep it here.”

Louzader added that the clinic’s patients help support a pharmacy in Groveland, another vital outlet for the remote community.

Gary Metz of Pine Mountain Lake said the understaffed clinic is a major problem. “The population in the Groveland area is growing and the health care is diminishing,” he said. “The clinic is critical with the number of people living in the Groveland area.”

It is taking two or three weeks to get an appointment, and new patients have trouble getting scheduled at all, Metz said. The resident said his wife requested a prescription refill three days ago that requires doctor approval and the clinic had yet to approve it.

Although Tuolumne County switched to a privatized model for rural health care about seven years ago and never had a Groveland clinic, county leaders are aware of the doctor shortage in the Groveland area.

County Administrator Craig Pedro said he talked with Sonora Regional’s top executive and was assured an extensive search was underway for a second doctor. And the clinic is being upgraded to make it more appealing. The plan is for a new doctor to work with Shield, who would continue in Groveland on a twice-a-week basis.

Pedro said it takes finding a doctor who wants to work in a rural community, whereas most physicians prefer larger practices in urban areas.

Sonora Regional, which operates a hospital and about 20 clinics, has explored options such as rotating a doctor from another clinic to Groveland part time but has not found the solution yet, Witzlsteiner said.

She said Sonora Regional’s tie to the faith-based Adventist Health System does not mean all of its health care providers are members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church; in fact, the majority are not.

“I can’t provide an answer on when we will have another physician for Groveland,” Witzlsteiner said.

This story was originally published November 17, 2014 at 7:58 PM with the headline "Doctors scarce in Sierra town of Groveland."