Minnesota: Quiet Care to Close

Last week in Minnesota, nurses at Stearns County's Quiet Care Clinic tested for HIV for the last time, after offering twice weekly HIV/STD testing for 17 years. The St. Cloud area's only public clinic will test until the end of the year for other STDs, then close permanently. Budget problems are forcing Stearns County to close Quiet Care, which treats 900 to 1,000 patients every year. "We're in tough times," said Renee Frauendienst, county public health director.

Quiet Care opened in 1985 and operates two days a week. HIV testing was added in the late 1980s. The clinic is one of eight similar public testing sites in Minnesota. Its patients have ranged in age from 12 to more than 70, Frauendienst said. A $10 donation for clinic visits and $20 for an HIV test is requested, but not required.

State grant funding has declined since the clinic opened, said Frauendienst. Now, the county pays most of the clinic's costs - about one full-time nursing position, she said. Under a tight budget, the Stearns County human services department is reevaluating the services it provides - how much they are used, if they are provided elsewhere in the community, and how much outside funding they get - Frauendienst said. The clinic's patient load has declined since a peak in 1991. About 500 patients tested for HIV that year, compared to an average 200 now, she said.

There were 244 cases of chlamydia diagnosed in Stearns County last year, and about 10 percent of those were diagnosed by Quiet Care, said John Clare, epidemiology field services supervisor for the Minnesota Department of Health. Sixty-five of the Stearns cases were between ages 15 and 19.

Betty Johnson, nurse for the Rocori school district, said she is afraid students will not get tested without the clinic because they are too embarrassed or too poor to be tested by their family doctor. "Some of these people who go to the clinic have no other resources," she said. "It's not like we've wiped out STDs. They're rampant."

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