Patients still searching for new doctors nearly 1 year after Wellstar Atlanta Medical Center closes

ATLANTA - Checking to make sure she has found the right rideshare driver, Brenda Black, who does not drive, climbs in and heads off to see her knee doctor -- about 15-minute ride from Black's home in Atlanta's Old Fourth Ward to south Buckhead.

For years, if the 71-year-old retired bank teller needed to see her doctors, all she had to do was walk about 10 minutes to their offices in the buildings around Wellstar Atlanta Medical Center, Georgia's second-largest hospital.

That was until last fall when Wellstar Health System announced it was closing the hospital after the health system reported losing $107 million in the last 12 months it was in operation.

Black says she was surprised.

"I heard about it on the news," she said.  "No one told me about it at any doctor's office or anything."

At first, Black says she was not overly concerned.

"I thought just the hospital was closing."

CLOSURE OF WELLSTAR ATLANTA MEDICAL PUTS PRESSURE ON AREA EMERGENCY DEPARTMENTS

Then she learned her primary care doctor was moving to Sandy Springs, another to Buckhead.

"I was thinking about, ‘What am I going to do,’" Black said. "I have to get everything reset, you know, find different doctors.'"

Black decided to follow Dr. Courtney Shelton, an internist helping manage her knee pain, to his new office on Peachtree Road near Piedmont Hospital.

"It takes a little more time," she says.  "It's not as convenient as, you know, 10 minutes away, right up the block."

Daphne Boyd faces an even longer drive to get to her cardiologist, who relocated from the area around AMC to Austell, where Wellstar Health System has a medical hub.

Now when she needs a checkup or labs, getting to her doctor takes time.

"It almost means taking the whole day off from work to do that," Boyd said

Boyd lives in Stone Mountain, about 35 miles from Austell, and says a recent trip for a checkup and labs took most of the day.

"I left my home at 11 a.m. and I had a 1 p.m. appointment," she told FOX 5. "I left my appointment at 4:30 p.m., and I did not get home until 7:30 p.m. The traffic going and coming was a problem. I was worn out!"

The closing of another Wellstar hospital, AMC South in East Point in early 2022, left South Fulton County's 234,000 residents without a full-service medical center.

A study released in April 2023 by Fulton County and Morehouse School of Medicine found, while Atlanta (with is Central Fulton) and North Fulton have hundreds of specialists, South Fulton has few specialty providers.

The researchers found South Fulton has no cardiologists, pulmonologists, or infectious disease specialists, only two oncologists, six neonatologists and just 30 mental health providers, a tenth of the mental health providers North Fulton has.

Dr. Kelley Carroll, chief ambulatory officer for Grady Health System, says the need for health providers south of Interstate 20 is huge.

"There's so much need in these zip codes, or so many people who do not have access to a primary care doctor, who don't have access to certain specialty services, that this is just the first step in narrowing that gap," Dr. Kelley says.

Dr. Kelley Carroll says Grady will soon open two new community-based primary care clinics, including the Grady Cascade Outpatient Center in Southwest Atlanta once operated by Wellstar. The other center will open later this year in West End.

The Cascade clinic will open in phases, according to Kelley.

"We'll have three doctors here, two nurses, one nurse practitioner and two doctors," she said.  "Then, we'll open up another section of it and add more specialists."

With support from Fulton County, Morehouse School of Medicine is also reopening a primary care clinic on the Southside, at the Buggy Works Office Park off Cleveland Avenue.

The goal is to take some of the pressure off Atlanta's crowded ER's where wait times are long and growing.

"So many patients come to our hospital emergency rooms because they just need to have their health care needs met," Dr. Kelley said.  "Unfortunately, if patients don't get those primary care needs met, they may end up with diabetic coma amputations, heart attacks and strokes, and that's what we're trying to prevent with these centers."

Daphne Boyd has been searching for a new Emory primary care doctor since March when hers retired.

She says the Emory providers she has reached out to are not taking new patients.

"I was informed that the reason why a lot of these physicians aren't accepting new patients is because of the closure of Wellstar (AMC)," Boyd said.  "Some of those patients were transferred to the Emory providers."

Brenda Black hasn't seen a primary care provider for almost a year.

"So, right now I'm at the crunch, you know," Black said. "I'm looking and then hopefully within a week I should choose one and have an appointment set up."

Black just hopes her new medical home, will not feel so far away from her Atlanta apartment.