ABOVE: Dr. Corey Welchlin and his team, Tom Tow, Abby Thomas, Kayla Olson, Amanda Guthmiller and Thomas Carpenter, at Center for Speciality Care in Fairmont on Tuesday, which was the last day for the practice at the Fairmont location.

FAIRMONT– In 1990 Dr. Corey Welchlin opened his practice in Fairmont and on Tuesday he officially closed Center for Speciality Care inside Victoria State Crossing in Fairmont. While the multifaceted decision was not an easy one to make, Welchlin did acknowledge the many good years he had spanning 36 years of caring for patients in the Fairmont area.

Born at the hospital in Fairmont, Welchlin grew up on a farm near St. James.

“This has always been home,” he said.

He originally had a desire to go into farming but his dad encouraged him to pursue something different and specifically suggested Welchlin become a doctor.

After graduating high school he went to Gustavus Aldolphus College for undergrad and then went on to medical school including five years of speciality medical training. He is a board certified orthopedic surgeon.

“When I decided I wanted to come back to the area, the Fairmont hospital gave me an interest-free loan to start my practice because the medical center didn’t want to hire an orthopedist,” Welchlin explained.

He had an independent practice and was part of the building partnership. He had to build his own business and medical records team and started out with just three employees.

“In the late 1990s when Mayo bought the clinic and eventually took over the hospital, the clinic doctors then, myself and the dentists and others who weren’t medical center employees, were forced to leave within two years and that’s when we built this building,” he said of the Victoria State Crossing building.

Welchlin said they got Tax Increment Financing (TIF) from the city and built the building in a partnership.

Somewhere around the year 2000, they moved into the newly finished building and it was at that time Welchlin said his practice kind of exploded.

“I went from a handful of employees to 130 employees at our largest. We have five orthopedists, three general surgeons, some family practice people, internal medicine. At one time I had six nurse practitioners and we covered about 10 different communities as far north as Willmar and as far west as Pipestone,” Welchlin said.

While things were going really well for a number of years, a few key events caused business to decline.

“Obamacare hit and then Covid hit. People retire, people move, people come and go and revenues decreased and things just kept getting tighter and tighter,” Welchlin said.

Covid hit especially hard as elective procedures, including many of the operations that have been done at Center for Speciality Care, could not be done, only emergency surgeries.

“We’d go months without a surgery and PPP money (Paycheck Protection Program) wasn’t enough to keep adequate staff and keep the lights on,” Welchlin said.

He did say that while he was given leeway, he wasn’t given the opportunity to turn the corner as the other shoe dropped in mid-January of this year when the building partnership told Welchlin he had to be out of the building on April 1.

“You can’t make any great changes in healthcare in a month or two. Anywhere you go, anywhere you interview, it takes weeks and weeks to get credentials, privileges, insurance companies and all that figured out,” Welchlin said.

While his office space has decreased in recent years, the practice still accounted for eight rooms within the building which staff have been clearing out over the last week.

Welchlin said he is sad to see his practice end here and is remorseful that it has to end like this, but he is grateful for what he’s had.

“I’m proud and pleased with what we’ve provided for years and I think we did a pretty good job of being responsive to patients and giving good outcomes and keeping people locally,” Welchlin said.

Along with Obamacare and Covid, Welchlin admitted that changes to the local healthcare scene have impacted his practice and that some other hospital systems in the area, Sanford and Avera, have done a better job with their orthopedic referrals.

He pointed out that back when he started, there weren’t many options for orthopedic care and his practice was the answer, which led to his boom. He has able to help many patients in those years and is proud of all that he was able to offer.

“Practices like mine have become very rare to survive or thrive. It’s become more difficult for multiple reasons. The mergers continue and you have to have a lot of financial support,” Welchlin said. “When I started practice in 1990, hips and knee replacements that we did would stay in the hospital for a week or 10 days but for the last 10 to 15 years, if insurance companies allowed it, we’d do outpatient hip and knee replacements and they’d go home the same day. Our pre-op, inter-op, post-op treatment is very good at pain management, patient education is better, out-patient therapy is better,” Welchlin said.

As that’s been happening, Welchlin said it’s saved people a lot of healthcare dollars and he thinks they did a good job of leading the community into that.

“When I first started doing these, I had an overnight stay room that we used for the first few years for hip and knee replacements just to make sure patients were doing well but we probably haven’t used that room in 10 years because everyone that we talk about going home goes home and they can control their pain with oral medication and we check on them the next day and start therapy within two days,” Welchlin said.

He said now people have to go to Mankato, St. Peter, Rochester or occasionally Blue Earth for the same procedures they used to do outpatient.

While the closure of Fairmont’s site is regretful for Welchlin, he does still have a practice in Buffalo Center, Iowa. He explained that the city of Buffalo Center had a community group that reached out to him a few years ago because Mercy Hospital had pulled out but they had a nice clinic building and no one to lead a medical practice.

“You have to be a medical professional to own a medical practice. You can’t just be anyone to do it,” Welchlin explained.

He said he had a fair amount of employees and patients from that area and that the plan was to recruit a primary care provider, which they have, as well as orthopedic care and general surgery.

Center for Speciality and Primary Care in Buffalo Center is staying open and doing well and Welchlin said he hopes to grow it in the coming years.

Welchlin is not planning on retiring on account of the closure of his Fairmont site and is instead scoping out his options. He has privileges to do surgeries in Blue Earth and Madelia and plans to reach out to the hospital in Algona, too. He is also exploring the option of serving as a locum tenens, temporarily filling in for a surgeon on leave.

While beginning today the Center for Speciality Care in Fairmont is closed, the number will roll over to the Buffalo Center site which will be answered five days a week.