Planned Parenthood will suspend clinic services in Durango on Sept. 6.
The clinic has not had a nurse practitioner on staff for over eight months, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains CEO Adrienne Mansanares said, and stopgap measures are no longer viable.
The indefinite closure will leave Durango without a brick-and-mortar abortion provider.
Since late 2023, staff members on a team from across a four-state region, which includes Nevada, New Mexico, Wyoming and Colorado, have circulated through the Durango clinic to ensure that the required licensed personnel were on-site.
“We’ve increased our recruitment efforts,” Mansanares said. “But even if we do bring someone on, sometimes it’s three to six months of training before they can start seeing patients.”
Mansanares did not have any estimate of when the clinic would reopen, but said “we anticipate opening back up again.”
The Durango Planned Parenthood clinic provides not only medication abortions, but also access to various birth control interventions; emergency contraception (known as Plan B or the morning-after pill); pregnancy testing and planning; testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections; and various other services.
Medication abortions, which are induced by taking a set of two pills and can be done at home after a telehealth appointment, are effective to terminate pregnancies up to 11 weeks.
While most of the services available at Planned Parenthood are available from other providers, including La Plata County Public Health or Axis Health System, patients seeking an abortion will have to turn to telehealth providers or clinicians in Cortez or Farmington.
Planned Parenthood has advertised an open Advance Practice Nurse position in Durango for eight months to no avail. It isn’t the only provider that has struggled to find advanced practice providers – over the last year, CommonSpirit Mercy Hospital deployed several changes to try to entice and retain providers.
“It’s been bonkers since the COVID pandemic started, and very fragile, especially in hiring providers in rural communities in particular,” Mansanares said. “Across the country, we’re seeing these provider shortages in all areas of health care.”
The wage, which sits somewhere between $44 per hour and $61 per hour depending on experience in addition to a $6,000 sign-on bonus, is competitive and not at issue, the CEO said.
“It’s just literally there are too many jobs and not enough providers,” she said.
About 1,200 patients visit the Durango clinic annually. Of the 600 patients to visit this year, 18% were from out of state. The bulk of those patients is seeking birth control.
The Planned Parenthood clinic in Farmington is open weekdays and, although it also has an open position for a nurse practitioner, the organization says there is not a risk that it too will close. The Cortez clinic is open Tuesdays.
Axis Health System, which has a clinic in Durango open Monday to Friday, will continue to provide access to contraception, pregnancy testing and counseling; preconception health services for men and women; STI testing and treatment; as well as a slate of other services, a spokeswoman said.
La Plata County Public Health’s clinic, open Monday to Thursday in Durango, offers a similar set of services, the clinic coordinator said.
Both organizations have options available for uninsured patients.
Mansanares said Planned Parenthood is working with patients so ensure there are no gaps in their care; the clinic will continue to book appointments up to, but not after, Sept. 6.
“It is just another example in a wave of examples of how broken the national health care system is, and that we do need a national solution to provider shortages across the country, regardless of the type of health care – it’s everywhere,” she said. “But I think particularly when we are operating in such a very divisive landscape for reproductive and sexual health care, it hits us harder because we do have so many other fights and so many other external issues we have to deal with.”
rschafir@durangoherald.com
