Search underway for replacement

By PHYLLIS ZORN

Staff writer

Physician Scott Akers, who started seeing patients at St. Luke Medical Clinic in Marion in July 2016, has put his house on the market and plans to leave the area.

St. Luke Hospital CEO Jeremy Ensey said Akers’s last day will be June 8.

The hospital board of directors decided last month to seek a replacement practitioner through the University of Kansas recruitment and retention center.

“They would be looking more for a resident, and residency ends in June,” Ensey said.

Ensey said the recruitment process could take four months to a year. It hasn’t ever taken the hospital longer than a year to recruit a new physician, Ensey said.

“We are also evaluating whether we’d use other recruitment firms,” Ensey said. “They would be finding us a physician who would already be practicing.”

In the meantime, the hospital is looking to find fill-in, temporary employees to see patients.

Akers, 33, grew up at Syracuse and graduated KU School of Medicine.

He formerly practiced at Via Christi in Wichita and was chief of staff at Stanton County Hospital in Johnson.