COMMENTARY: What’s wrong with Vashon health care?

Almost 50 years ago, a few dedicated, ambitious volunteers founded Vashon Maury Health Services (VMHS) with two or three nurses operating a small clinic in a rented house in Burton. From that humble beginning, health services on Vashon grew as VMHS acquired a 30-year lease from the U.S. government; built, with grants, volunteer labor and private donations, the present health center on an old U.S. Army base; started an auxiliary organization called Health Center Volunteers (Granny's Attic) to help offset costs of operating a clinic; hired a medical staff, including Drs. Koch and Kappelman and actually operated the clinic for most of the past 40 years.

By Susan Riemer • July 13, 2016 4:30 am
Courtesy Photo
Courtesy Photo

Almost 50 years ago, a few dedicated, ambitious volunteers founded Vashon Maury Health Services (VMHS) with two or three nurses operating a small clinic in a rented house in Burton. From that humble beginning, health services on Vashon grew as VMHS acquired a 30-year lease from the U.S. government; built, with grants, volunteer labor and private donations, the present health center on an old U.S. Army base; started an auxiliary organization called Health Center Volunteers (Granny’s Attic) to help offset costs of operating a clinic; hired a medical staff, including Drs. Koch and Kappelman and actually operated the clinic for most of the past 40 years.

About 15 years ago, changes started to occur. Unable to continue to operate the clinic without incurring annual losses, VMHS signed an agreement with Highline Medical Group, located in Burien, for Highline to take over medical operations. In the meantime, the United States simply deeded the Sunrise Ridge property to VMHS; Granny’s Attic started making direct monthly payments to Highline, and both Granny’s Attic and Highline paid monthly rents to VMHS to offset ongoing maintenance costs. VMHS even changed its name to Sunrise Ridge Health Services to reflect its evolving role in health care.

All of these events happened intentionally. The next event didn’t. CHI Franciscan acquired Highline. Then, after about three years of operating the clinic, CHI Franciscan suddenly announced it was leaving Vashon. I won’t try to describe all of the reasons for CHI Franciscan’s departure, but these reasons are symptomatic of our current health center problems and might suggest a better way to move forward.

Currently, Vashon has at least four separate organizations trying to fund, analyze, and improve health care on the island: Sunrise Ridge Health Services, Granny’s Attic, Vashon-Maury Health Collaborative and a newer group investigating the possibility of a property tax-based”hospital district. These separate groups don’t always “make nice” with each other.

Notice I didn’t include among these groups the medical staff at the clinic. With more at stake than anyone on the island, the medical staff’s opinions haven’t even been solicited, yet right now the medical staff is generating the best effort yet to find another operator for the clinic. Recent meetings with organizations that successfully operate smaller health centers and clinics in the King County/Seattle area were initiated by Koch with assistance from Sen. Sharon Nelson and Rep. Eileen Cody. The medical staff is stepping up to the crisis and deserves a whole lot more support from our community than it gets.

Make no mistake; primary health care is a money loser in modern-day America. CHI Franciscan invested upwards of $1 million in its brief tenure here and is pulling out. So, we need to decide. Currently no public tax money goes (or ever has gone) into support of the health center. We can wait and try to get federal, or state, or county, or, yes, even local hospital district public money, or we can start a united effort to fund island health services with voluntary donations. We get to choose how to provide support. But first, we need to find a new operator, or medical services provider for the health center, and once that provider is in place, we all need to step up our support and no longer take the health center for granted.

Maybe this is just the nature of Vashon. Lots of different ideas about lots of different problems. But the solution for keeping the clinic in operation seems pretty simple to me. We need to stop wrestling with the “who’s in charge” question. Stop splitting into separate factions, start to recognize the seriousness of our present crisis and work jointly and together to keep the health center open.

— Charlie Peterson is a Sunrise Ridge Health Services board member, offering opinions entirely on his own and not as a representative of Sunrise Ridge.