TRENTON - A medical facility in Jones County that serves about 200 uninsured or underinsured patients per month closed its doors this week after its parent company didn't renew its contract.

Now, Jones County Public Health Director Kristen Richmond-Hoover is wondering where these self-pay patients will go for care since the Grace Clinic - located at the Jones County Health Department in Trenton - is no more.

"There are hundreds of people in this county that need care - and where are they going to go come next week?" Richmond-Hoover said. "When you have unemployment, you have uninsured people.

"Just because they're uninsured, that doesn't eliminate their need for care."

The problem, she said, came last month when local officials sent Goshen Medical Center - which took over the Grace Clinic in 2006 - the new contract.

"They did not send us back the contracts which we sent them in the beginning of June," Richmond-Hoover said. "I do not know why.

"I have tried to contact them and have not received any true statements back to let me know why."

Goshen Chief Executive Officer Greg Bounds did not return voicemail messages left for him by The Free Press.    

Jones County Manager Franky Howard said the county was told earlier this year Goshen would set up a new clinic in Trenton, but he had not heard any official word as to when that could be. He, too, said communication with Goshen has been difficult.

"I did actually talk to Greg (Bounds) and he said there would be a transition process for the clients," Howard said. "The Grace Clinic patients are actually patients at Goshen according to the way the contract is set up."

Howard said Jones County is only the location of the clinic and the Grace Clinic wasn't something it could afford to operate with county funds.

Grace Clinic primary care clinic primarily for the uninsured and underinsured that opened in 2003 through a start-up grant. When that grant ran out in 2006, operators partnered with Duplin County-based Goshen Medical Center, which was eligible for for federal grants.

Alternatives for self-pay patients within the county include Eastern Carolina Internal Medicine in Pollocksville, Trenton Medical Center and Coastal Children's Clinic in Maysville. But Hoover said the capacity of those facilities for self-pay patients is low at best.

Hoover said the clinic closing down will be a huge problem to the county's uninsured, which includes much of its large population of farmers.

Vice President Joe Biden toured Goshen in Faison earlier this year and called it "the future of rural medicine," according to a report in the Goldsboro News-Argus. Goshen received more than $600,000 in federal stimulus funding, the paper stated.

Justin Schoenberger can be reached at (252) 559-1075 or jschoenberger@freedomenc.com.