KSB CEO Dave Schreiner announced the permanent closure of its Mt. Morris clinic location at Tuesday’s village board meeting.

The clinic had been temporarily closed as part of the hospital’s COVID-19 resource reallocation plan. Among the reasons for its permanent closure were a low number of patients, its lease being up after this year and a lack of lab and x-ray services.

“We were looking at the volume in the clinic, which has gone to eight patients a day,” Schreiner said. “At our other clinics, that number is mid-20s or low 30s. Dr. John Plescia, who has been here, relocated his office to Oregon and has been seeing patients there. The advantage is that we have lab and x-ray services in Oregon and not here.”

KSB was paying $5,000 a month for its lease with the University of Illinois for the Mt. Morris location. There were three staff members, the physician and at times a nurse practitioner in the building.

Schreiner said with KSB not owning the building, it couldn’t invest in it and bring it up to the level it usually desires for its clinics. The clinic location dates back to the 1970s when it was built by the University of Illinois College of Medicine as a community care site for medical students.

The lack of a KSB location in Mt. Morris may not be permanent, Schreiner said.

“We want to keep open the possibility in a post-COVID environment of having a clinic somewhere here in town,” Schreiner said. “Whether that’s partnering with Pinecrest, or some other place in town where we might have the ability to have a certain amount of half days or days to provide care.”

In the interim, Schreiner said KSB wants to put together a transportation system so people who want to see providers in Oregon would be able to be transported at the hospital’s expense on certain days of the week.

Mt. Morris Village President Dan Elsasser said he was unsure of how many residents attended the clinic for medical care compared to those that were already going out of town. He had hoped more residents would come to the meeting to give their thoughts on the change. There were no public comments on the closure.

“That’s why I invited them up here, KSB, hoping if people had questions that they’d be here to answer them,” Elsasser said.