PORT ANGELES – Delaying contracts with nine primary care physicians for a month won’t endanger the agreements, the doctors and Olympic Medical Center’s top administrator agreed Wednesday.
Speaking separately to hospital commissioners, interim CEO Eric Lewis and Dr. Bill Kintner of the former Virginia Mason clinic on Eighth Street agreed both sides need more time to negotiate the three-year pacts.
Reasons to postpone ratifying the contracts – originally set for Wednesday’s meeting – included a delay in OMC’s financial analysis of the facility it has renamed the Olympic Medical Physicians Primary Care Clinic.
Congress also gummed up the process, Lewis said, taking until Dec. 8 to reject a proposed 5 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors.
Lewis said he would give the cost analysis to commissioners at their Jan. 3 work session.
He hopes they can ratify the contracts on Jan. 14, when he also wants to conclude buying the clinic building.
