PORT ANGELES — Olympic Medical Center commissioners received a mixed message — a tangled one, really — from more than 100 people who attended Saturday’s forum on the impending closure of the Virginia Mason clinic at 533 E. Eighth St.
Some urged the local hospital to buy the clinic outright.
Others advocated the opposite.
And one man suggested that Olympic Medical Center will wind up treating many Virginia Mason patients anyway — at its emergency room.
About 20 people lined up to address commissioners.
If they all agreed on anything, it was that Medicare played a major part in Virginia Mason’s decision to close the clinic by March 31, 2006.
Most of the standing-room-only audience that overflowed the hospital’s Linkletter Hall were senior citizens.
Clallam County has the second highest population of Medicare clients among Washington counties, said Dr. Scott Kennedy, the hospital’s chief medical officer.
More than 21 percent of county residents are 65 or older, Locke said.
In Sequim — which one speaker jokingly called “God’s waiting room” — Medicaid-eligible people comprise 45 percent of the population.
Olympic Medical Center already expects to write off almost $54 million in 2006 in “contractual adjustments” — the difference between the hospital’s cost to treat Medicare patients and what it receives from Medicare.
