PORT ANGELES — A representative of Gov. Chris Gregoire will visit Port Angeles on Wednesday to meet with parties to the Virginia Mason clinic crisis and attend an Olympic Medical Center commissioners meeting.
The meeting is where Commissioner Gary Smith has promised a solution “one way or the other” for providing primary care to thousands of people after the clinic closes on April 30.
Gregoire’s aide on health questions, Mark Rupp, will come to town at the invitation of Larry Howard of Port Angeles, a member of the Peninsula Medical Cooperative.
The co-op formed among clinic patients who wanted a voice in how to provide primary care to 12,700 patients — more than half of them on Medicare — when the clinic’s Seattle-based corporate parent locks the doors at 433 E. Eighth St.
Virginia Mason said the Port Angeles clinic has consistently lost about $1 million a year since it bought the facility in 1995.
In the meantime, Steve Trubow, another co-op member, contacted Andy Demott, aide to U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Belfair, asking the congressman to mediate discussions between the clinic’s doctors and the local hospital.
Dicks’ 6th Congressional District includes Clallam County.
