Fairfield fighting to reopen health clinic

Fairfield residents are fighting to reopen their community health clinic, which closed in January, but the going is slow and challenging.

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Tue., Sept. 24, 2019

After Fairfield’s health clinic closed in January, community members donated a van to Palouse Country Living, administrator Helda Fuchs said, and they use it almost daily now to take residents up to Spokane for appointments and medical needs. Fuchs hopes that the clinic can reopen to ease costs as well as increase access that her residents previously had to health care.

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Palouse Country Living, administrator Helda Fuchs walks the hallways with resident Lorraine Colettei on Sept. 12. Fuchs hopes that the closed Fairfield health clinic can reopen to ease costs as well as increase access that her residents previously had to local medical care.

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Bill Huffman, 60, has lived in Fairfield at Palouse Country Living for a year and a half, where he leads bingo games and plays Santa Claus during Christmas. Since the clinic closed in January, he has had to go to Spokane a few times for appointments that previously would have only required a trip down the road.

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Bill Huffman, 60, has lived in Fairfield at Palouse Country Living for a year and a half, where he leads bingo games. Since the clinic closed in January, he has had to go to Spokane a few times for appointments that previously would have only required a trip down the road.

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Amanda Goyke, the owner of Owl Pharmacy, which has a location in Fairfield, said that once the clinic closed, they lost a lot of patients, who previously got their prescriptions on the same street as their doctor’s clinic.

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Ena Leitz had gone to the Fairfield health clinic since moving to the community in 1948, including giving birth to two of her three children there. She also saw the life-saving impacts of the clinic in Fairfield, when she worked at the assisted living facility on the bluff more than three decades ago.

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Ena Leitz, left, visits with fellow Palouse Country Living resident Virginia Majesky, Thursday, Sept. 12, 2019, in Fairfield, Wash. Leitz had gone to the now-closed Fairfield health clinic since moving to the community in 1948.

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The Palouse Country Living facility is located in Fairfield, Wash.

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The closed health-care clinic in Fairfield, Wash., closed at the start of the year. It was next door to Owl Pharmacy. Amanda Goyke, the owner of Owl Pharmacy, said that once the clinic closed, they lost a lot of patients, who previously got their prescriptions from clinic.

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