CommonSpirit Vascular Surgery Penrose, a clinic located inside Penrose Hospital in Colorado Springs, Colo., was forced to close after an "abrupt departure of all medical providers," The Denver Gazette reported Sept. 18.
The clinic permanently closed Sept. 6, according to the report, and letters have been sent out informing patients of the situation. The vascular clinic had employed two surgeons, along with two physician assistants and one nurse practitioner.
The report did not include information as to why the providers suddenly left, but one patient interviewed indicated that the clinic had been given no notice of the closure and that his upcoming appointment to review tests and schedule a surgery was canceled.
“Here I am, I can barely walk, and Penrose has done nothing to reach out other than to tell me I need to start the scheduling process over again. They gave me six phone numbers of other doctors, and five were in Denver," former patient Richard Rauschkolb said. He was a patient at the vascular clinic for eight years.
The Chicago-based, Catholic-affiliated CommonSpirit Health finalized an agreement in August 2023 to take over 15 of the 20 hospitals that had previously been under the Centura Health system for 27 years in Colorado and western Kansas. This included the clinic at Penrose Hospital.
"CommonSpirit Penrose Hospital is grateful to Dr. William Chambers and Dr. William Fry for their decades-long service to our patients in the Colorado Springs community," spokesperson for the hospital system Lindsay Radford said in a statement to the Gazette. "We are disappointed they chose to leave the hospital, and we recognize the inconvenience this causes their patients."
CommonSpirit also said that it is "actively working to connect these patients with high-quality medical care" and that they would be welcoming new vascular surgeons in the coming months.