To North Tama Citizens,

About November 7, 2025, the staff at Mercy One Clinic in Traer were informed Mercy was closing the Traer clinic. At the same time, the Board of Directors, under the name North Tama Medical Associates (owners of the clinic building) was informed that Mercy One (Trinity Heath) wanted to discuss modification of their clinic lease with us as they no longer intended to provide medical services in Traer.

The North Tama Medical Associates have met and discussed how to meet this new situation and provide for continued medical care in our North Tama community. If you, as we, have been reading about the issues nationally concerning medical services you know it is a complex problem.

But this is not a “the sky is falling” situation and none of us is Chicken Little; we have been here before. In 1973 we had no provider of health services, no pharmacy, no physical therapist, and no chiropractor. The Traer Ambulance and EMT service had just been started. But this community rallied to NTMA’s request for support and the result was the present clinic building which opened for our medical care in 1975. For perspective on the financial support we received in 1973: 35 individuals each gave $2,500 seed money to NTMA. That is, when adjusted for inflation, about $18,242 in today’s dollar value.

We have begun our search. We are open to assistance from the community. If you are aware of persons who have an interest in providing medical care in Traer let us know. As a community, we are far better situated today than we were when we opened in 1975 with Drs. Westhoff and Downey. Then we had no patient files or thriving medical practice. It took a bit of time for them to establish their practice and draw patents back to town and the community embraced them.

As citizens we all have a stake in medical care available to us close at hand. We will try to achieve this goal with the resources at our disposal. But, if it’s not possible, we may need to come to you for financial support. If so we hope it may be as forthcoming in 2025 as it was in 1973.

We thank you all for your concern and patience.

North Tama Medical Associates Board of Directors: Jammie Howard; Rex McKee; Robert Ketter; Michael Reuman; Kurt Ketter; Jared Bauch (319) 478-2847, a landline.