SEQUIM — While bringing an emergency medical facility to Sequim may be a priority for the city of Sequim and Clallam County Fire District 3, Olympic Medical Center’s CEO Eric Lewis said the hospital’s emphasis is to bring more primary care access to Sequim.
Lewis told the Sequim City Council in a work session May 14 that he and other administrators know Sequim needs more services and that OMC’s campus will be the focus for development in the coming years.
“Primary care access is our No. 1 goal, particularly around Sequim,” he said. “We need more buildings and physicians and having adequate primary care access would really move the system forward.”
Part of that plan includes expanding the Sequim campus on Fifth Avenue with three projects estimated at about $15 million total in construction.
Lewis anticipates OMC going to bid in late June on two projects — the expansion of the Cancer Center at about $4 million with construction tentatively beginning in September and taking a year to complete — and adding 13 exam rooms at about $5 million to the existing primary care area.
The third project tentatively costs $5 million to $6 million to build an outpatient surgery and endoscopy center, also known as the Olympic Medical Surgery Center, remodeling existing facilities to add two endoscopy rooms and two surgery rooms. It may go to bid later this year/early next year for a tentative start in March and completion before Christmas.
The cancer center would include a new pharmacy, expanded medical oncology, exam rooms and chemotherapy space, he said, which should “serve Sequim well for at least 15 years” with another expansion planned if needed.
As for the expanded exam rooms, Lewis said he thinks OMC “can meet Sequim’s primary care needs in about 15 months from now.”
“That’s exciting news for us,” he said. “Working with Jamestown and other physicians I think we’re going to be in a position to meet the primary care needs of residents in Sequim.”
OMC’s commissioners will meet at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 6, in the medical services building, 840 N. Fifth Ave., on the second floor to tentatively approve the projects going to bid, he said.
For now, Lewis said Port Angeles’ campus is accepting some new patients because it has more space but once the Sequim facilities are approved they’ll be able to recruit more physicians to offset the need.
Emergency services
How do these plans affect the possibility of bringing an emergency medical center to Sequim?
Officials with the city and fire district sought joint discussions with OMC and other health care providers after passing joint resolutions in March and April to work together on this effort.
Lewis said he’s interested in a joint meeting and he asked to come back more frequently to provide updates for City Council members.
Putting in a Critical Access Hospital, a designation to help rural hospitals provide health care, won’t be an option either, Lewis said, because Sequim is too close to Port Townsend and Port Angeles’ hospitals to be eligible. One possibility, he said, is for the walk-in clinic to become an urgent care with extended hours.
“As Sequim grows, we’ll look at adding more emergency services,” Lewis said. “The challenge is really sick people need an ICU, full blown lab, and respiratory therapy, i.e., a hospital. Anything less than that really won’t meet the urgent needs of the very sick. We’re going to work on that over time.”
Lewis said the walk-in clinic is open seven days a week and saw more than 20,000 visitors last year, but he attributes that to the lack of primary care providers in the area.
City Manager Charlie Bush said in an interview that the point of the discussion wasn’t necessarily to seek a direct response for an emergency medical center.
“I’m looking at this as an incremental process and we’ll keep working with them on that,” he said. “OMC’s efforts are a step in the right direction in further benefiting our community. I don’t expect OMC to open a hospital in the next two years. It’s going to be a long-term discussion.”
Needs, budget
Council member Ted Miller asked what else discourages more providers from coming here, which Lewis said is identified in OMC’s Needs Assessment in Sequim — schools’ facilities and spouse employment.
“Continuing to invest in our schools is a way to attract more physicians,” Lewis said. “Health care workers are very focused on education for their kids.”
Physicians’ spouses are often highly educated, too, he said, so there needs to be job availability for them.
“We can’t pay the highest wages but our board has allocated competitive wages,” Lewis said.
So far, OMC has recruited eight physicians this year, he said.
Sequim’s campus hosts 250 employees, and as a system, OMC has about 1,460 employees.
One deterrent for recruitment, Lewis said, has been the growing challenge of available housing, particularly affordable housing for OMC’s middle-to-lower pay employees.
“Housing was not an issue for a long time but it certainly is now,” he said.
OMC saw a shortfall at $2.5 million last year, the first in Lewis’ career.
He said about 97 percent of OMC’s revenues come from patients and programs like Medicare and Medicaid have been paying less than costs to the hospital.
“It’s a challenging business model,” he said.
However, in its first quarter of 2018, Lewis said OMC saw a 0.5 percent increase in revenue.
“We’re moving forward but it is a very challenging environment,” he said.
Lewis said, “We’re optimistic things will stabilize and Medicaid and Medicare make adjustments to meet the system and community’s needs.”
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Matthew Nash is a reporter with the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which is composed of Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. Reach him at mnash@sequimgazette.com.
