SEATTLE – Three hospitals on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula are seeking an affiliation with Seattle-based Swedish Medical Center – an alliance that would allow the smaller hospitals to send patients to Swedish for specialized treatment and open the door to electronic medical records.
The governing boards at Olympic Medical Center in Port Angeles and Jefferson Healthcare in Port Townsend have voted to negotiate a contractual relationship with Swedish. Forks Community Hospital commissioners are scheduled to vote on the proposal on March 22.
“This is an important step in the process,” Jefferson Healthcare CEO Mike Glenn said. “The selection of Swedish Medical Center as our Seattle-based partner will bring patients of Jefferson County much-needed access to tertiary services and technology.”
“The coming-together of healthcare services for one goal – quality patient care – is the outcome we expect through these partnerships,” added Forks Community Hospital CEO Camille Scott.
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The three hospitals, located in Washington’s remote and rugged Olympic Peninsula, to the west of Seattle, had held a joint board meeting last June and sent letters to seven larger hospital around the Puget Sound last fall. After all seven responded, officials narrowed the list of candidates to three – Swedish, Harrison Medical Center in Bremerton and Providence Health & Services, also in Seattle. Jefferson currently has an affiliation with Harrison Medical Center on a heart attack program and one with Swedish on a telestroke program.
A partnership would allow the three hospitals to send patients to Swedish for specialized healthcare that isn’t available on the peninsula and give the hospitals access to clinical specialists, possibly through telemedicine services. In addition, the alliance would enable the hospitals to upgrade their IT services and move toward an integrated electronic medical record – a key ingredient in qualifying for federal health IT reimbursements.
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“Having the same electronic medical records will bring efficiencies and ease of moving referrals back and forth,” Eric Lewis, CEO of Olympic Medical Center, said in an interview with the Peninsula Daily News.
“We need to expand the capabilities of electronic medical records in order to meet the evolving standards of the federal government,” Glenn said in an interview with the Port Townsend Leader last September. He said the government has defined what it expects, even of small hospitals, and “if your system fails you will be penalized by receiving less reimbursement.”
Officials at the three hospitals have said they want to ensure that the larger hospital in any affiliation would take all referred patients regardless of ability to pay. Most of Jefferson Healthcare’s patients and many of those at Olympic Medical Center and Forks Community Hospital are on Medicare or Medicaid.
The partnership would be the first of its kind in the state – which Lewis described as the beginning of a transformation of the healthcare delivery system.
In related news, another hospital in the state is looking to form a business partnership. Valley General Hospital in Monroe has contacted eight hospitals in the Puget Sound region, including Swedish Medical Center, about a wide-ranging alliance that could include anything from offering specialized medical services to leasing or even selling the hospital.
According to news reports, taxpayer-supported Valley General has withstood four years of financial losses and has an operating budget of $55 million.
