PORT ANGELES — Olympic Medical Center will retain its laboratory but add outside support services to it, rejecting a potential $4 million sale while spending $200,000 for management and consultation.
Dr. Scott Kennedy, chief medical officer, said Tuesday that OMC had considered selling the outpatient portion of the lab or all of it, especially after losing $1 million last year due to a Medicare fee-bundling policy.
The policy folds lab fees into the often lesser charges for same-day office visits, he explained.
But while the hospital might make money from the sale, Kennedy said, “over a period of very few years that return would be lost” to outside testing costs that OMC cannot control.
As it does with certain radiology and oncology functions, OMC will employ an outside service that will provide equipment, reagent chemicals and management consultation for the lab.
“So we won’t be selling anything, and we won’t be getting any $4 million?” asked Dr. John Miles, OMC commissioner.
“We want to maintain a high level of lab services for our community,” Kennedy said.
“We also want to retain our skill base that we have in our lab.”
In this case the contractor is Laboratory Corporation of America, based in Burlington, N.C., which operates labs regionally in Bellevue, Mount Vernon, Oak Harbor, Port Orchard, Seattle and Tacoma.
Better known as LabCorp, the company will store test results in a central record under the same format as those used by Seattle hospitals, he said, eliminating the need for some retesting.
OMC commissioners expect to approve a contract with LabCorp at their next meeting, Aug. 19. They have cancelled their Aug. 5 session.
The LabCorp agreement “will help decrease the overhead situation at our lab,” said Kennedy, “while retaining our highly valuable and skilled lab staff.”
Kennedy praised employees for their patience while OMC considered selling at least the outpatient laboratory if not the entire operation.
“They’ve just been champions and they’re very happy to remain with OMC,” he said.
As for LabCorp, “they understand that their role here is to help the local institution succeed,” he said, “to do locally as much as we can do really well locally.”
Other action
In other action Tuesday, hospital commissioners:
■ Bought for $271,750 The Women’s Clinic, 930 Caroline St., across from the hospital.
OMC administrators haven’t decided if they’ll tear down the building for their new $16.2 million medical office building on which construction is expected to start this summer.
The medical center has rented the clinic for 10 years. It will move its operations onto the third floor of the main medical center, 939 Caroline St., and send some services to the Sequim Specialty Clinic, 840 N. Fifth Ave.
■ Approved $157,000 of electrical work by the city of Port Angeles for the new two-story building, plus a $70,000 amendment for relocation of a sewer on the site bounded by Race, Caroline, Washington and Georgiana streets.
■ Purchased for $50,000 space at 824 Georgiana St. that will provide parking for Olympic Home Health, which is relocating to 801 E. Front St.
■ Paid $74,000 for an esophageal manometry system from Sandhill Scientific of Denver that will test the efficiency of a patient’s swallowing response, measure acid reflux, and help diagnose pulmonary complaints.
■ Bought a picture archiving and communications system, known as PACS, for $608.000, that will combine in one program both cardiology and radiology images.
The system can be accessed at all OMC computers, including mobile devices, Kennedy said.
It will save more “at least $180,000” a year, he said, the cost of integrating the current five separate systems.
Technicians will spend four to six months “migrating” existing images to the new PACS, Kennedy said.
■ Approved contracts with Dr. Stafford Conway and Dr. Alexander Pan, both employees of Swedish Medical Center working at OMC, for $50 and $52, respectively, per work relative value unit (WRVU).
WRVUS are Medicare measures of doctors’ services. A simple office visit might be worth 1 WRVU, for instance; a surgical procedure might be worth 20 WRVUs.
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com.
