PORT ANGELES — Olympic Medical Center may reduce its inpatient hospital beds by 19 in order to reap better reimbursement from Medicare.
CEO Eric Lewis said OMC had eyed the change for the past six months and probably would spend another six months before reaching a decision.
The hospital at 939 Caroline St. currently offers 68 inpatient beds. Reducing them to 49 would drop OMC to the maximum allowed for a Medicare designation as a Sole Community Hospital with Rural Health Clinics for which the federal agency would give greater support.
Capacity vs. compensation
Lewis said Wednesday how much more money OMC could receive was “what we’re studying.”
The apparent contradiction between capacity and compensation is due to Medicare’s willingness to support smaller rural health clinics with larger payments.
Adding to the incongruity is that the 19 beds wouldn’t disappear from OMC. Actually, total beds might grow to 75, Lewis said.
That’s because the medical center might reassign some inpatient beds for a new hospice program, for palliative (pain-relieving) end-of-life care and for long-term charity patients who sometimes spend weeks in the hospital, he said.
Those beds wouldn’t count against the Sole Community Hospital limit.
Hospice operations, he said, would be coordinated with Volunteer Hospice of Clallam County, Port Angeles, and the private Assured Hospice of Clallam and Jefferson Counties, Sequim.
Over the past year, an average of 40 beds have been occupied by inpatients each day, according to Lewis.
“Ninety percent of the time, it would be no problem,” he said, to reduce the capacity, which he said could be adjusted in emergencies.
OMC also recently received some breathing room in its fight against so-called site-neutral Medicare reimbursements. They would limit the medical center to the same rate paid to smaller free-standing clinics sometimes called as “docs in a box.”
For at least a few years, Lewis said, OMC’s existing clinics will be “grandfathered” from the proposed rate reductions.
Although OMC could not build new clinics and exempt them from site-neutral restrictions, it could enlarge existing facilities, Lewis said.
‘They can be expanded’
“Fortunately, we have quite a few clinics started; they can be expanded,” he said.
“Grandfathering the existing clinics is a very good outcome for Olympic Medical Center.”
OMC’s objection to the site-neutral proposal is that unlike smaller clinics, the medical center maintains a full-service inpatient hospital, a 24/7 emergency department and a Level 3 trauma center, he said.
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com.
