Over 25,000 patients will need to find new pediatricians and primary care doctors before Anchor Medical Associates closes all three of its offices by June 30.
The physician group’s Bald Hill Road location in Warwick will shutter on April 30. Warwick patients can continue seeing their provider at the medical group’s Commerce Street location in Lincoln. On June 30, both the Lincoln location and the adult medicine office on Corliss Street in Providence will close. A closure notice was first sent to patients last week, WPRI-TV reported on Friday.
“The decision to close our practices has been extremely difficult, particularly against the backdrop of a shortage of primary care physicians across the state,” the practice stated in its letter to patients, which was posted to its website Monday. “While our commitment to our patients remains strong, we just cannot continue to operate in this increasingly challenging healthcare environment.”
The practice was incorporated in 1999. There are currently 22 providers listed on Anchor’s website. Over the last decade, the practice said it has had great difficulty in hiring new doctors to replace retiring physicians.
“While costs continue to rise, reimbursement rates make it extremely difficult to attract new physicians to our state,” the letter stated.
Anchor stated that for patients who need to find new doctors, it wants to “make this as smooth a transition as possible,” and is encouraging patients to obtain copies of their medical records within the next 90 days.
A records request form is available on the practice’s website. Records will continue to be available after June 30, according to the Anchor website.
The Rhode Island Department of Health posted an announcement about the closure on its website and is advising patients to do two things: begin searching for a new primary care provider, and request copies of medical records. The health department notes that while records can be obtained after the closure date, “it is best to obtain them beforehand.”
More Medicaid, more reimbursement problems for Rhode Island providers
The Hospital Association of Rhode Island (HARI) called the closure is another blow to the already wounded state of primary care.
“These unfortunate events highlight how Rhode Island’s health care crisis is very real, and getting worse,” Howard Dulude, the trade group’s interim president, said in a statement released Monday.
Addressing subpar provider reimbursement rates has been a recurring motif at the State House. A sizable number of Rhode Islanders receive health care through public insurance like Medicaid, but Rhode Island’s Medicaid reimbursement rates lag behind other states. Hospitals blasted Gov. Dan McKee earlier this year when the governor’s budget made little room for higher reimbursements.
HARI has put its weight behind three bills this legislative session, each with a Senate and House version, and two of them focused on improving the Medicaid reimbursement rate problem. The Family Health Care Act is a joint resolution that would OK a $90,000 appropriation to the Executive Office of Health and Human Services to help the agency raise Medicaid reimbursement rates. Both versions have been introduced in their respective chambers but have not yet been scheduled for hearings.
Another Medicaid bill that has been introduced in both chambers but not yet heard by committees would funnel money from hospital licensing fees toward increasing Medicaid reimbursements for hospitals. Starting in fiscal year 2026, which begins on July 1, hospitals would be organized into a new three-tier system, and with their size, services and patient population informing their tier placement.
Hospitals with higher proportions of Medicaid and uninsured patients would pay less in fees than bigger hospital systems. Once the state collects $90 million in these fees, any excess funds would be poured into Medicaid reimbursements.
A third bill backed by HARI would make the state more competitive with Massachusetts and Connecticut and grant the Office of the Health Insurance Commissioner (OHIC) greater regulatory power over commercial health insurers’ payments to hospitals and providers. The commissioner would need to review and approve annual increases in hospital contracts and provider payment rates if the total cost of care exceeds the Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers plus 3%.
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
