PORT ANGELES — A task force of doctors and Olympic Medical Center administrators will spend the next four months examining permanent options for providing primary health care in Clallam County.
OMC commissioners listened to a presentation on one of those alternatives, the so-called Twin Falls, Idaho, model, at their work session Wednesday night.
The model had been touted as one solution to the crisis for Medicare patients caused by the closure of Virginia Mason’s Port Angeles clinics.
The task force as outlined by OMC Administrator Mike Glenn will hold four meetings — the first set for June 29 — and examine the patient population in Clallam County Hospital District No. 2 and ways to provide it with primary care.
The district owns the medical center’s Port Angeles and Sequim facilities and serves central Clallam County and the East End.
Medical center’s options
Among OMC’s options, which it may mix or match:
* Independent clinics, some of which must restrict their Medicare patient load due to the government’s paltry reimbursements.
* Rural health clinics such as Family Medicine of Port Angeles, which receives a better break from Medicare because of its location.
* Federally qualified health centers, one of which is the Lower Elwha Tribal Health Clinic. While it too gets poor reimbursement from Medicare, it receives better compensation for its Medicaid patients.
* “Boutique” clinics to which “members” pay monthly dues as well as charges for office visits and medical procedures.
* Hospital-supported clinics like the interim arrangement by which OMC is running the former Virginia Mason clinics in the wake of Virginia Mason’s departure from Port Angeles.
* Provider-based practices, owned by a hospital, which receive payments both from Medicare Part A (for facilities) as well as from Part B (for doctors’ charges).
The latter two strategies exist at the Twin Falls hospital whose executive director of physician services spoke to OMC commissioners Wednesday.
