Roxbury's only medical clinic will close in November, a spokeswoman for the Health Alliance of the Hudson Valley confirmed today.
“It will be closing, yes, in November,” said Sylvia Murphy, the Health Alliance's director of marketing told the Watershed Post this afternoon.
According to Murphy, both the Margaretville Family Health Center and the Roxbury Family Health Center have been up for sale by the Health Alliance.
In September, the Health Alliance announced that it had sold the Margaretville Family Health Center practice to Paul Llobet, a doctor who had been the medical director of Tribeca Medical before deciding to relocate to the Catskills full-time. Llobet's ownership of the Margaretville practice will become official tomorrow, October 1.
The Roxbury Health Center, which was a part of the Margaretville practice, has effectively been orphaned in the sale.
“The [Margaretville] hospital currently owns both the Margaretville and Roxbury Health Centers, and it will no longer be owning them,” Murphy said.
In a press release sent out on September 22, the Health Alliance announced that Llobet, pictured above, had purchased the Roxbury clinic in addition to the Margaretville clinic.
But Llobet, reached by telephone today, said, “That was a misprint.”
“I know nothing about Roxbury,” Llobet said. “All I did was buy Margaretville.”
Llobet said that his new Margaretville practice did come with the right of first refusal on the Roxbury Health Center if another party purchases it. “But that's not ownership,” he said.
Murphy said that Margaretville Hospital is operating the Roxbury Health Center until November 14, when it will close. She said that Roxbury's patients are being the given the option of joining Dr. Llobet's Margaretville practice.
The closure of the Roxbury Family Health Center will be front and center at a public meeting tonight at 6:30pm in Roxbury's Town Hall. Carey Wagner, the chair of Margaretville Hospital's Board of Directors, and Charles “Chip” Flinn, the chief operating officer of the Health Alliance, will be taking questions after a presentation to town officials.
