PORT ANGELES — Olympic Medical Center administrators Wednesday celebrated keeping their promise to provide primary care at the former Virginia Mason clinics.
“We had a very, very short time to get this thing up and running,” Gary Kriedberg, executive director of Olympic Medical Physicians, told hospital commissioners, who met Wednesday night.
“It’s always nice when we can say we kept our promise to the public.”
Olympic Medical Physicians is the arm of OMC that has contracted with the former Virginia Mason physicians and is hiring some of the clinic’s staff.
Olympic Medical Center had about 10 days to make the transition that — although it wasn’t perfect — didn’t miss a moment of running the facility at 433 E. Eighth St.
It reopened Monday as the Olympic Medical Physicians Primary Care Clinic.
Offers still being made
Olympic Medical Physicians still is making offers to former Virginia Mason staff members.
Some of them won’t return because they will lose their severance benefits if they sign with a new employer, Kriedberg said.
One highlight of last weekend’s transition was Virginia Mason removing its computers and loading them into a semi-trailer truck as OMC technologists were unloading and installing their own PCs.
For the time being, Kriedberg said, the clinic will make do with paper records instead of electronic information. Hospital administrators also are grappling with the clinic’s internal communications: voice mail versus e-mail.
A new system should be operating within “the next couple of days,” said Dr. Scott Kennedy, CEO of Olympic Medical Physicians.
Moreover, the doctors and staff are suggesting “how to make the clinic better than it was before,” said Kriedberg.
“We’re listening and making responses to those suggestions.”
