Olympic Medical Center will open a primary care clinic in Sequim later this year pending approval by its board of directors.

Those directors meet at 6 p.m. today in Linkletter Hall in the basement of the hospital, 939 Caroline St., Port Angeles, but have no action on the issue on their agenda.

An OMC official said the medical center will wait for private physicians and clinics to absorb all the Sherwood patients that they can before embarking on its own clinic.

The situation is similar to OMC's taking over Virginia Mason Medical Center's Eighth Street clinic in Port Angeles after the Seattle-based hospital abandoned its satellite facility with its thousands of patients in 2006.

At that time, OMC commissioners adopted a policy of encouraging private practitioners and clinics to remain in business even though they would compete with the medical center.

Meanwhile, the Jamestown S'Klallam tribal clinic said it would increase its capacity to meet some of the need for primary care created by Sherwood's closing.