Patients at Libby’s CARD Clinic were left wondering when, or if, they will receive their medical records after the facility abruptly closed Monday, three weeks sooner than expected.

The Center for Asbestos Related Disease posted a message on its Facebook page at about 3:30 p.m. Monday that it was permanently closed as of Aug. 10.

The beleaguered facility was set to close Aug. 31 after its federal grant funding was not renewed, which resulted in the impending closure. Federal grant funding provided nearly all of the clinic's operating revenue and the clinic was in the process of dissolving the organization after the grant was pulled.

Attempts to reach the clinic’s Executive Director Tracy McNew by phone on Monday were unsuccessful.

About an hour following the closure announcement, CARD patient Tanya Olsen arrived at the clinic to get her medical records. She was unaware of the closure.

“I don’t spend much time on Facebook,” Olsen told The Western News. “I knew they were closing at the end of the month and I wanted to get my records.”

Olsen learned she had to call the clinic number at 406-293-9274 and leave a message.

In the announcement posted to social media, the clinic noted limited ability to process and respond to medical records requests.

“CARD is actively consulting with the appropriate government agencies and legal counsel to determine the appropriate process for handling medical records requests during this transition,” the message said.

THE CLINIC has been on shaky ground since it lost a September 2024 appeal to a federal jury’s $6 million judgment in June 2023.

Railroad giant BNSF Railway sued the clinic for fraud in 2019, claiming more than 1,000 fraudulent diagnoses. Jurors ruled the clinic made or presented false claims 337 times.

McNew previously said that most of the claims at issue in the trial concerned the submission of forms to Medicare that certified patients had been diagnosed with an asbestos-related disease and were eligible for coverage under an Affordable Care Act provision created to respond to Libby’s environmental health threat. 

According to McNew, prior to trial, Judge Dana Christensen made a legal ruling that any claim based only on an imaging read by an outside “B-reader” radiologist was invalid, making it likely that those certifications constituted a bulk of the 337 claims.

The clinic opened in 2000 under the direction of St. John’s Lutheran Hospital, now known as Cabinet Peaks Medical Center, following the discovery of widespread asbestos exposure. Hundreds of asbestos-related deaths and thousands of diagnoses followed.

The CARD Clinic separated from the hospital in 2003 and moved to its own location in 2004. 

In 2010, the federal Affordable Care Act provided millions of dollars for asbestos screening and surveillance as well as asbestos-related health-care services. Since then, CARD has received millions in funding from the Centers for Disease Control that allowed it to operate and provide free screenings.

In August 2024, CARD received a new five-year federal funding grant that was abruptly terminated earlier this year, leading to the impending closure.

The federal government recently began a more stringent review of grants due to the perceived amount of fraud that was occurring.