Cox

ELKINS — After more than 25 years of service to Elkins and the surrounding communities, Dr. Kevin Cox will be retiring and closing his office at the end of the month.

Cox’s office, which is located on Robert E, Lee Avenue, will officially close its doors on June 30. Cox, a practicing ophthalmologist, will be seeing patients and doing procedures until that date.

“I don’t know if I’m going to work somewhere else or what I’m going to do, but it’s just become untenable here,” Cox said. “And I can’t get anyone else to take this practice. I really don’t know who to recommend my patients to go to because there really isn’t any other ophthalmologist around here. It means that people are going to have to drive a little further to get care.”

Cox, who has been practicing in Elkins since 1998, will be scheduling surgical follow-up visits through August. 

“I was trained to do a lot of different things, but nowadays there is so much specialization where you need six eye doctors instead of one,” Cox said. “But that’s apparently the way people like it and the way things pan out…

“In the last 27 years it has become pretty obvious that the availability of a solo practitioner has gotten pretty sparse. Everything is consolidating into larger organizations.”

Cox said he has enjoyed serving his patients and being a part of the Elkins community over the years.

His patients can request that their records be sent electronically at no cost to the provider of their choice through December of this year.

“I have patients I have been following for virtually the whole time I’ve been here,” Cox said. “And we have done pretty good – doing their cataracts, fixing their eyelids, and doing their shots. And they haven’t had to drive to Morgantown for all of those things. Unfortunately, it won’t be that way in the future.”

Cox said that his regular patients have been reacting differently when hearing the news that he was leaving.

“It’s interesting, some of my patients have been congratulatory, some have been angry, and some are sad,” Cox said. “I’ve been getting little trinkets and a couple bottles of wine from them. People are reacting differently to the situation.”