The Vashon Health Collaborative has provided islanders with several observations and conclusions (“Attempts to support island health care so far,” July 8 and “Strengthening island health care will require cooperation,” July 15 letter to the editor). The collaborative has studied the issues surrounding primary health care delivery on Vashon and partially assigns responsibility to a lack of “independent providers to take modest steps to work together.”
As Vashon Health Watch, another group of islanders studying the delivery issue since 2013, we believe that assigning responsibility to our small group of providers is unfair. Their practices are established and their patient bases very loyal. Any attempt to create new organizational opportunities for providers through a collective cooperative or a new practice or a rural health designation puts at risk their ability to attend to their patients as they have for years. If change deprives physicians and patients of time for proper consultation and requires both to adjust to new policies and practices, the change has great potential to become ineffective. Health care delivery has already been undergoing sufficient changes for providers and patients.
Vashon Health Watch has also observed trends in health care delivery: fewer island practices; a reduction
in practitioners, modifications in managed care reimbursements, changes in insurance coverage and the new Affordable Care Act of 2014. We think comprehensive community education is the next needed step to improve health care delivery on Vashon. Education incentivizes us all about policies and practices, insurance coverage and providers and their decisions to accept reimbursements from insurance companies.
Education of all parties should be our form of cooperation. The island cannot change who we are in primary care, but we can inform ourselves of our rights, our roles and our responsibilities and become better informed of changes in the health care marketplace.
— John Staczek, May Gerstle, Jim Hauser and Kay Longhi
