URGENT CARE

DispatchHealth is ready to help

What an exciting time for local healthcare access on Vashon Island! The community told us urgent care is the top priority for action by the Vashon Health Care District. Now we have a solution ready that turns that priority into a reality. It’s on the agenda for a vote at this week’s regular meeting of the District Commissioners.

Beginning last year, we assembled a community work group to assess options for providing urgent care for Vashon. Scores of volunteers and island healthcare experts have worked on that plan.

The work group chose DispatchHealth, the company that pioneered in-home urgent care 10 years ago and now operates in 42 community areas across 21 states. DispatchHealth has extensive operational experience with the special challenges of in-home urgent care. If the Commission approves, DispatchHealth will roll out on Vashon in early September and start taking urgent care appointments by October 1.

We understand some may see this as a competition between DispatchHealth and Vashon Island Fire & Rescue. We see it as the beginning of a community collaboration, building a foundation for urgent care — now and for years to come.

This initial contract runs only two years and includes a go/no go clause at 18 months. That’s 18 months of learning what Vashon needs through real world experience while immediately delivering high quality urgent care. We hope VIFR will work alongside us to learn and collaborate.

Instead of a ferry to the mainland, our families will have island house calls. That’s peace of mind for those who may suddenly need lacerations sutured, infections diagnosed, minor injuries triaged and treated, medication prescribed, and all the other healthcare needs that can arise when Sea Mar or Vashon Natural Medicine are not available.

Once we have a reliable urgent care service landed here with Dispatch Health, I’m inviting island healthcare providers and community leaders, including VIFR, to join us in a blue-ribbon planning group to work together on the future of care on Vashon. This step allows ample time to build for the future based on real world experience.

Tom Langland is a retired pharmacist, a former owner of Vashon Pharmacy, life-long Vashon resident and the current Chair of the Vashon Health Care District.

VIFR urgent care plan isn’t ready

I’m a former Vashon Health Care District Commissioner. I support the District’s proposed contract with DispatchHealth to bring in-home urgent care to our island.

The alternative, from Vashon Island Fire & Rescue (VIFR), simply isn’t ready for prime time. Choosing it would be a big risk.

The VIFR plan looks like a rush job — hastily prepared, light on specifics. The 2023-2029 strategic plan VIFR approved just last year says nothing about providing urgent care; the chief only began talking about it this spring. He presented his plan to his board July 31 — then pressed them to approve it less than two weeks later.

I don’t know of a single island health care professional outside VIFR who has spoken up in favor of it.

The chief says he can start providing urgent care on Jan. 1. That’s questionable. This would be a brand-new endeavor for VIFR; they’d be building it from scratch.

DispatchHealth’s urgent care model, in contrast, has been tested and perfected over 10 years in communities across the country. If the contract is approved, nurse practitioner-led teams would start making house calls on Vashon in a matter of weeks.

Say you’re building a house: Would you hire a builder with no experience, or one who had built 50 houses? The choice is clear.

The chief says he wants to model Vashon’s urgent care on the North Mason (Belfair) fire district’s Mobile Integrated Health program. Relationships with nearby hospitals and other providers are integral to that program’s success. There’s no indication a VIFR urgent care provider would have that kind of support system.

Finally, a couple VIFR leaders recently have made the claim that they already provide urgent care. Not so. They can’t write prescriptions or administer drugs, among other things. Urgent care providers can.

VIFR’s claim is preposterous, and islanders know it. They identified urgent care as Vashon’s most significant unmet health care need when the Health Care District asked for input and direction early last year. The District listened, and spent more than a year exploring possibilities.

Vashon deserves real urgent care, now. That’s what DispatchHealth offers.

Eric Pryne

VASHON ISLAND

A show of island character

Recently my husband and I shared our “island character” by taking out-of-state guests to First Friday.

It was a wonderful warm evening of art, music, shopping and food. Tired and thirsty at the end of the evening, we stopped at the Green Butterfly (across the street from Cafe Luna) for a cold drink. We set our full bag of groceries under the table. Upon leaving, we completely forgot those groceries. Too late in the evening, we realized our mistake and sadly wrote off the loss.

Saturday, we delivered our guests to the airport and ran other errands. Sunday I thought I’d just drive uptown in the hope of possibly finding the bag still under the table. It wasn’t.

I asked Dia VanHolde, the employee who had prepared our drinks two days prior, if she might have seen someone take the bag. She gave me a big smile and said: “No, but I saw what happened, and put it in the refrigerator overnight, hoping you would come back.” She was as happy to see me as I, her.

To me, she’s the epitome of what I call “island character.” We are so fortunate to have this lovely lady in our midst.

I hope you’ll find time to visit the Green Butterfly, enjoy some refreshments, and meet this kind, thoughtful woman.

Charon Scott-Goldman

THUNDERBIRD TREATMENT CENTER

Words matter

Among a number of issues that came to a vote at the August 15 Community Council meeting was a motion connected to King County’s alleged lack of transparency about zoning permits connected to the Thunderbird Treatment Center.

At one point in the discussion, a community member took the microphone and suggested that the side in favor of the drug treatment center was acting out of their “colonizer guilt.” I was taken aback by the layers of inference and possible meanings attached to this unfortunate trope. Does it infer “woke” as it’s currently used in a pejorative sense? Does it connote a strong, but thinly disguised judgmental polarity of “we” and “them?” It is not for me to know.

But what I do know is that this issue is not about certain individuals who harbor guilt or not, but rather it is about how we want to define our community. Aren’t we asking, who is welcome and who is not, who will belong and who will be excluded?

Can the Vashon community, with all of its bucolic and wild beauty, its plethora of healers and its many privileged residents, some with homes worth well over ten million dollars and up, allow itself to grapple with its identity? Can we embrace the healthy challenges related to how we want to define ourselves without succumbing to accusations on either side of the debate that inevitably divides and unfairly labels members of our community?

I hope so.

Merna Ann Hecht