Published: May 26, 2008 10:09 pm            

Patients’ records scattered outside abandoned clinic

EBENSBURG — Medical records at an abandoned and dilapidated clinic in Colver have been thrown around the building’s parking lot and on the side of the road, despite a county agency’s promises that patient information had been removed.

Cambria Township police Officer Boyd Sherry confirmed that he responded to a call from a neighbor on May 3 and found X-rays, patient files, billing information and medical materials strewn outdoors.

“One of the doorways was wide open, and anyone could have gotten into the building,” he said.

Upon learning of the incident, county commissioners instructed the director of the county agency that has owned the clinic since 2004 to remedy the situation.

It is the latest in a series of repeated vandalism that has degraded the Colver Clinic from a progressive coal-town medical facility built in 1914 to a blighted empty structure today.

Larry Custer, executive director of the Cambria County Redevelopment Authority, which took over the clinic four years ago when the doctor-owner failed to pay his property taxes, blames recent vandalism on The Tribune-Democrat.

Although the records were stolen two weeks earlier, Custer said that newspaper articles provoked the vandalism.

“You’ve advertised its condition,” he said.

“You did an article on the clinic, saying it was wide open, so every vandal and low-life around has been going in there,” Custer said.

In 2004, when Custer’s agency took over the building, he did some initial cleanup, and promised to secure confidential records.

Last week he said he had dealt with only some of the records.

“I had taken out two pickup-truck loads of files, but I left the X-rays there. I took what I felt were the medical records. I didn’t feel that billing records were in the same category,” he said.

“Besides, I don’t have any place to store these records,” he said.

Custer recalled putting a padlock on the door to the building about two years ago.

But now, and at the time the records were vandalized, the doorways are open and grass and weeds surround the building at the bottom of First Street.

Broken glass, litter, and open doors and windows invite vandals.

Township police say they regularly respond to reports of vandals inside, or even up on the roof. Colver firefighters have termed the building “dangerous” in its present state.

President Commissioner P.J. Stevens said on Friday that the building has been relocked, and an outside contractor will board up all openings.

Some records have been taken out and will be shredded, Stevens said.

Custer has maintained that potential buyers are interested in the building, and Stevens said there was a recent meeting about a possible purchase.

“They’re looking at additional ground to make it more viable, and possibly increase the parking area,” he said.

The clinic was built by Eastern Coal Co., which founded the village of Colver and built the houses and company store.

Dr. Alexander Martin ran it from 1924 to 1974, and the United Mine Workers union owned it from 1940 to 1974.

The final owner was Dr. Aragam Subbarao, who bought it in 1986 for $30,000 but did not pay property taxes and left town in 2000.

Neighbors and township officials have been trying to get action – either renovation or demolition – from the county.

        

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