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The recent closure of Presbyterian Medical Services (PMS) clinics in Reserve and Quemado has left residents, schools and local leaders scrambling to find solutions for rural health care. The clinics, which officially shut their doors September 1, had served 3,500 Catron County residents for decades. A press release was issued by Catron County on August 5 announcing the closures after officials said they were given abrupt notice by PMS about 24 hours prior.
PMS CEO Steven Hansen said the closures were the result of a long struggle to retain medical providers, coupled with financial losses over the past three years.
Hansen said nurse practitioner Jenifer Deziel declined a permanent position at the Reserve clinic and went on to open the Cowboy Clinic in Reserve with medical assistant Dee Baker.
“In a small town, you can’t really have two practices. It doesn’t work,” said Hansen. “And we continued to try to recruit, and then our locum tenens doctor, who had said he was going to be there through October, decided to move on, and gave us very short notice. And that kind of instigated that.”
He said in the last three years with the cost of health care going up they lost about $1.4 million.
“(We) saw that it was not going to be sustainable,” Hansen said.
According to Catron County Manager Deborah Mahler the Cowboy Clinic will be moving into the former Reserve PMS clinic space in early October and is hoping to expand their services north to Quemado and Pie Town.
For Quemado, the loss has direct consequences for students and staff. Superintendent David Lackey said the school district owns the building where the clinic operated, and had partnered with PMS for nearly 20 years by providing the facility and upkeep. He said he estimates he was informed of the closure 24 hours before the press release was sent on August 5.
“When PMS stepped away, we didn’t lose the facility, but we lost the services,” Lackey said. “Now, when a student needs a checkup or a sports physical, it’s not a 30-minute appointment—it’s half a day or more out of class. Staff members also have to miss more instructional time for routine appointments or required drug testing.”
Aside from the Cowboy Clinic, the nearest medical providers are in Socorro and Springerville, AZ, which doesn’t accept New Mexico Medicaid.
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Lackey said the school and community are working to attract another provider. “Our overarching goal is to continue medical services locally,” he said. “We’re open to private practice, another partnership, anything that can meet the needs of our kids and community.”
State Rep. Gail Armstrong (R-Magdalena), who represents the area, also expressed frustration that she and other elected officials were not informed of PMS’s struggles sooner.
“Mr. Hansen and his crew met with the governor, and I said to him, would you like me to attend that meeting? And he said, ‘No’, and that’s what’s the most upsetting,” said Armstrong.
She said that if she would have known there was an issue earlier she might have been able to help.
“But I was really upset that no one told me. No one told Senator Brantley, no one told us until we started getting phone calls of ‘did you know the clinics are closing?’”Armstrong said.
Armstrong pointed to broader challenges facing health care in rural New Mexico, including low Medicaid reimbursement rates and medical malpractice laws that she believes discourage providers.
“I am working with David Lackey to get some kind of funding to possibly keep that one open under the rural schools,” she said.
New Mexico addresses healthcare in rural areas, especially for students, through programs like School-Based Health Centers, the New Mexico Health Service Corps and the Rural Health Care Delivery Fund.
For residents of Quemado and Reserve, the loss of local care means more trips to Springerville, Gallup, Socorro, or Albuquerque—journeys that can be burdensome and eat up work and school hours.
The Cowboy Clinic is currently the only medical clinic in the county. They did not respond for comment in time for publication, but in a Facebook post from August 6 said they currently accept Medicare, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Humana, and have signed the paperwork to be credentialed with Cigna and United Health Care. They are applying for Medicaid credentials from the state.
“This is very important for us,” the Cowboy Clinic’s post said, “because 75% of all people in Catron County have Medicaid insurance,” adding that “after five and a half months, we have still not been approved by the state of New Mexico for our Medicaid credentials. We are being told this is due to a glitch in their new computer system, which prevents our application from uploading into the ‘KYP’ portal, where we need to have approval in order to set up electronic fund transfer for Medicaid patients, because they have a new system and only pay electronically.”
