As promised, hospital administrators have produced a replacement for the doctor hired late last year to serve temporarily as the second staff physician at the Myrah Keating Smith Clinic.
Dr. Norbert Straub came aboard in January in a temporary capacity, allowing the clinic to expand its hours and providing needed relief for the senior physician, Dr. Elizabeth Barot.
"Dr. Barot has been there for a while without a whole lot of backup," said Eugene Woods, chief executive officer of the Roy L. Schneider Hospital, under whose administration the St. John clinic falls.
Before Straub's arrival, Barot was for months the clinic's sole physician — on duty to see patients during regular clinic hours at St. John's primary health care center and on call any other time.
Woods and his medical services chief, Dr. Judith Watson, said when they hired Straub in December that they would immediately start a search for his successor. On Wednesday, Woods announced that Dr. Peter Alan Krause will fill the position, again temporarily.
Krause, who is certified in family medicine and cardiac life support, is scheduled to begin work at Keating on March 13. By the time the doctor's commitment to St. John expires in July, Wood said, he hopes to deliver a permanent hire for the second physician slot. Three resumes from doctors who have completed their medical residencies are already on his desk, the chief executive said.
Last year, as part of the reorganization of the territory's hospitals as semi-autonomous bodies, the Keating Clinic management was brought under the administration of the Schneider Hospital. In October, a new advisory board sent out an island-wide survey asking St. John residents what improvements they would like to see at their clinic. High on the collective wish list, Woods said, were increasing the number of staff physicians and expanding clinic hours — both of which have been accomplished.