The Vancouver Clinic will no longer accept new Medicaid clients and, over the next three years, will reduce the amount of Medicaid services it provides to Clark County residents.

The Vancouver Clinic currently provides primary and speciality care for more than 36,000 Medicaid clients — more than any other community Medicaid provider — as well as specialty care for those other providers. Medicaid services account for 25 percent of the clinic’s total business. Over the next three years, the clinic will reduce that amount to 10 percent.

“We’ve had an open door to Medicaid,” said Duane Lucas-Roberts, chief executive officer of The Vancouver Clinic. “That’s one reason our volume is so high. The problem is, that’s not sustainable. There won’t be a Vancouver Clinic.”

To get to more stable ground, the clinic will not accept any new Medicaid clients and will not replace existing Medicaid clients as they leave the clinic or are removed from the Medicaid program, which serves low-income children and adults, said Ann Wheelock, the clinic’s chief financial officer.

The clinic will continue to provide care to Medicaid clients who are already established patients. And in areas where the clinic has the only specialty provider in the community — infectious disease, for example — the specialists will continue to treat new clients, Wheelock said.