Summit Pacific Medical Center executives visited the Montesano City Council meeting Tuesday, Nov. 13, to discuss progress on what the hospital system is calling its Wellness Center, a major expansion that’s nearing the end of construction.
City officials also got the opportunity to ask questions about any potential clinic that could come to Montesano if the city leaves its current hospital district (which operates Grays Harbor Community Hospital) and joins the public district that operates Summit.
Summit CEO Josh Martin discussed his vision of a transformation in care ideology. He began his presentation with a couple stark statistics.
“On average, Grays Harbor County residents die three years sooner than any other resident in the state,” he said. “And we have 50 percent less providers than any other county in the state.”
Grays Harbor County has one primary care physician for every 2,740 residents, according to Countyhealthrankings.org, which is published by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. They say the overall ratio in Washington is 1,200:1. Only Douglas (3,380:1), Franklin (3,420:1), Mason (4,070:1) and Pacific (4,170:1) counties have worse primary care physician to resident ratios, according to their data.
Chief Medical Officer Dr. Ken Dietrich said that even though there is a shortage of doctors in Grays Harbor County, “We are not currently recruiting doctors.”
They now have a shortage of space until the Wellness Center opens in late January. He expects to reach capacity again for doctors by the end of 2019.
Martin outlined the hospital’s vision of wellness care. The vision offers medical and therapy care at the new facility but adds to it fitness and dietary guidance. That guidance begins at Summit and would continue outside the hospital, at places like Monte Fitness and others across East County. The Wellness Center also will have demonstration kitchens where they can help educate patients on dietary changes.
“Another CEO on the other side of the state, he says, ‘Josh, why are you committed to wellness? You’re putting yourself out of business.’ I said, I know. It’s the harder thing to do. … But that’s the right thing to do,” Martin said.
Councilman Dan Wood called the Wellness Center “a huge blessing to all of Grays Harbor.”
Councilman Robert Hatley asked where Summit was planning on placing its family medicine residency program clinic, a program Summit Pacific is trying to develop.
“We’re still very much in an exploratory,” Martin said. “It’s a marathon, and there are certain legs of this race that we still have to get through. We just recently got our sponsorship, which is a huge feat, to even have an accredited hospital willing to sponsor us, having the support of the University of Washington (which is working through Providence St. Peter Hospital in Olympia). However, we still have a ways to go.”
Some of those other steps include board approval, site visits, program accreditation and government assistance.
“We’re still building it. Primarily, the residents would be rotated within our rural health clinics within our district.” Currently, its clinics are in Elma and McCleary.
Summit will celebrate the opening of its Wellness Center in Elma on Jan. 25. There will be a ribbon cutting and other festivities.
The city of Montesano is a part of Grays Harbor Hospital District No. 2, which operates Community Hospital in Aberdeen. In late September or early October, Montesano Mayor Vini Samuel requested that Montesano residents be deannexed from Hospital District 2 so they could join Hospital District 1, which runs Summit.
Samuel’s hope is that a family medicine residency clinic would then be built in Montesano, where doctors could finish their education while working through Summit.
So far, Samuel said at Tuesday’s meeting, the city has not received a reply to its request.
