Overbrook ? A grass-roots effort to raise money to keep Overbrook’s only medical clinic from closing has failed.

Residents of this town of about 1,000 people launched a drive a little more than a month ago to raise $50,000 to keep Kansas Medical Clinic open beyond this month.

They raised $34,600.

“We’re heartbroken,” said Beth Pankratz, who helped lead the attempt to save the clinic. “I think we can feel like we tried and gave it our best, and that’s all we could do.”

In May, administrators with Topeka-based Kansas Medical Clinic announced it would close its Overbrook facility after July 31. The company, which operates six clinics in Topeka, has owned the Overbrook clinic for about three years and never made money with it, they said.

That announcement spurred Pankratz and others to form a committee and meet with clinic and Overbrook city officials to discuss ways of saving the clinic and boosting its revenue and patient count.

Clinic officials said they needed to average at least 18 patients per day to break even, instead of the 12 it had averaged. They told townspeople that if $50,000 could be raised by mid-July that would subsidize the clinic enough to keep it open until the end of the year, thus buying time for a permanent financial solution to be devised.

It wasn’t to be. Kansas Medical Clinic President Dr. Shekhar Challa decided this week to go ahead with the closing.

“A lot of time and thought went into this difficult decision,” Challa said. “We are of the opinion that the clinic would still face financial loss six months from now and we do not feel right using the money raised by the community.”

Challa commended the community for trying and said clinic officials were also heartbroken about the ending.

July 31 will be an emotional day not only for the clinic’s patrons but for the staff as well, said Sheila Musil, office manager. Though the staff will transfer to the Topeka clinics, they will miss the Overbrook people, she said.

“It will be awful — terrible,” she said of having to leave.

The money raised by the drive will be returned to contributors, Pankratz said.