Coastal Health & Wellness clinic directors resign

TEXAS CITY, Texas (FOX 26) - Officials with the Galveston County Health District have urged patients that have undergone medical or dental procedures at either the Galveston or Texas City locations of Coastal Health and Wellness between March 2015 and February 2018 to report to their facility. Over the last week, 1,082 patients have decided to get tested and out of 510 tests that have been returned, not a single patient has tested positive for Hepatitis C, Hepatitis B or HIV.

“I think I got it done over here in 2016 when I came over here to get my tooth pulled,” says Timothy Hutto, who went to get tested on Friday afternoon.

Henry Gomez also stopped by GCHD with his concerns. He says his two nieces have had dental work done at the clinic within the announced time range.

“I’m deeply concerned about the babies, you know, how are they going to take it?," asks Gomez. "How can we accept this? At the same time too, as a taxpayer, I understand that there might be some class action lawsuits and what impact is that is that going to be placed upon the taxpayers?”

Right now Dr. Philip Keiser with the health district is concerned that six patients that received dental procedures during that time frame have tested positive for hepatitis C. These results and the finding that tools had not properly been cleaned have led to the investigation. Two of those six may have been affected outside of the clinic by either risk factors or an older infection, leaving officials to be concerned with four patients and how they may have contracted hepatitis C.

“You know we have two dental clinics and what was really disturbing to me was that they all clustered in the Texas City clinic all right so they are all clustered, not only that, they clustered around to doctors and then the last thing we asked was was there evidence that someone who is known to have hepatitis C was seen at the same time or the same day and at least two of those patients were the same doctor same day”, says Dr. Keiser.

Hutto says he believes one of his friends was one of the four people that had previously tested positive for hepatitis C while at the clinic and until he gets his results he says he will be worried. Hutto says, “oh he called me and told me he told me that I need to come get checked two he said everybody needs to get checked, I didn’t believe it at first until I had my cousin and they was watching the news and they told me yeah it’s true you need to go up there get checked”.