MONUMENT SQ.—Atreva Health Care, a doctor’s office that operated for 25 years at 770 Centre St., closed last month, according to Beth Israel Deaconess HealthCare (BIDHC), which took control of Atreva patients’ medical records.
Atreva owner Dr. Francisco Trilla, who still lives in JP but now works in California, told the Gazette that his children will move into the former medical practice, which is a house.
“Health care is changing dramatically,” Trilla said of his office’s closure. “I think the small practice model is not a viable model anymore.”
A large advertising banner for the BIDHC Jamaica Plain doctor’s office at 545A Centre St. is hanging in front of Atreva’s building. Atreva’s phone number also forwards automatically to BIDHC’s JP office.
But BIDHC did not take over Atreva—only its patient records, said BDIHC spokesperson Rose Lewis. By law, if a medical practice closes, it has to transfer patient records to another medical practice, she said.
“We are basically the custodians of their medical records,” she said, adding that BIDHC receives no money for doing so.
BIDHC will hold onto the records unless a patient tells them to transfer the records to another doctor, Lewis said.
The BIDHC ad banner and the forwarded phone number’s voicemail do not say anything about medical records transferring.
Trilla was a longtime community activist who ran unsuccessfully for state representative and served on Mayor Thomas Menino’s original transition team. Trilla became the chief medical officer of Santa Rosa Community Health Centers in Santa Rosa, Calif., last fall. He travels between Massachusetts and California regularly, he said.
“I’ll be back in Massachusetts,” Trilla said. “I remain very involved and committed to that community.”
As he did with Atreva, Trilla continues to focus on medical care for the Latino community. He said that California offers some better support than Massachusetts for such programs as expanding health care for homeless people.
“To be in a part of the country whose majority of people are a Latino demographic makes things so easy politically,” he said.
Former Atreva patients with questions about their medical records can contact BIDHC Jamaica Plain at 617-522-5464.
Updated version: This article has been updated with comments from Dr. Francisco Trilla.