SEQUIM — At 13 years old, Olympic Medical Center’s Sequim campus hurts with growing pains.
Like a teenager outgrowing his or her clothes, for the collection of clinics that includes OMC’s Cancer Center, Sleep Center, polyclinic vascular center, radiology and other facilities at 777 N. Fifth Ave., its diagnosis is healthy, but its prognosis is growth, according to its chief executive officer.
Its walk-in clinic alone had more than 8,700 visits in 2014, and its primary care clinic logged more than 5,000 visits, Eric Lewis, OMC’s CEO, told Clallam County Public Hospital District 2 commissioners Wednesday.
OMC operates Olympic Medical Center in Port Angeles, the Sequim Medical Plaza and satellite clinics across the district, which stretches from central Clallam County to the Jefferson County line.
The Jamestown S’Klallam Family Health Clinic also has provided primary care since 2010 on the 20-acre Sequim campus that OMC bought in the 1990s and opened with physical therapy services in 2002 and cancer radiation in 2003.
It has added several clinics since then.
“We do not have enough space in medical oncology,” Lewis said after the board heard a presentation by cancer center Director Ken Berkes and Dr. Rena Zimmerman, oncologist and radiologist.
Design expansion
Present plans call for hiring an architect by June 1 to design an expansion with construction starting as early as 2017, Lewis said.
“We’re talking 10 to 15 years into the future,” he said about providing more space for chemotherapy, a cancer-patient navigator and integrated medicine that could include chiropractic, oncological acupuncture, herbal medicine and medical massage.
Lewis called the Sequim campus “almost hospital without beds” and said, “We definitely have the best cancer center in the nation for a rural community.”
Immediate plans for cancer center expansion will be akin to current emergency department improvements at the Port Angeles hospital, he said, “tweaking our space to go into the future.”
Meanwhile, OMC’s largest capital project, a medical office building across the street from the hospital, is set to go to bid in May.
The medical center also has applied for a three-year, $600,000 grant to provide diabetic education and treatment.
“It’s an exciting grant if we can get it,” Lewis said. “It’s $200K a year for three years.”
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com.
