Think about It: OMC headlines

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, August 27, 2025

A July 23 Sequim Gazette headline reads “’Medicaid cuts will hit hard,’ says Olympic Medical Center CEO.”

An Aug. 6 Sequim Gazette headline reads “Wolf resigns as head of Olympic Medical Center.” Darryl Wolfe says the “decision was difficult but necessary” and “cited personal reasons” for his leaving.

Aug. 7, Peninsula Daily News headline reads “OMC to pursue partnership with UW.”

Times, they are a-changin.’

That is, if you are Olympic Medical Center, our OMC, our healthcare community.

Being the CEO of OMC is a tough job with some glory given the size of the institution and its absolute importance to our community. That may be about it for the “glory” part. The rest is hard work in a nearly impossible situation.

The presence of a vibrant OMC is one of the reasons the population of the Olympic Peninsula has grown over the past couple of decades.

The population growth has been supported by an active healthcare community that grew alongside a growing community of middle-aged people.

Unfortunately, much of the growth is in a Medicare-age population known to need health care services which are paid at a rate that cannot sustain the service.

The primary providers of healthcare on the peninsula are Forks hospital, Forks Family Medicine and Bogachiel Clinic in the west end. The east end has Jamestown Family Health Clinic, North Olympic Health Care Network and OMC which includes hospital services, primary providers and specialty providers in the east and remaining county.

Notably, people come here to retire, usually in the early days of their retirement and in relatively good health. If they stay, and often, they do, they will use local healthcare services and discover there is enough to sustain them as they age until their condition begins to require greater access to specialized services more likely available in metro centers off the peninsula.

In the meantime, people who have access to reliable transportation do travel outside the area for necessary medical care visits such as need for a specialist not available on the Peninsula.

Having a number of those visits that require significant travel out of the community over an extended period may be the catalyst for some people to move out of the area to be closer to the medical services needed.

Most people would rather stay and are among those in the area’s aging population who need access to resources to maintain a vital and resilient healthcare system.

Here’s the bad news

It is not easy in the current healthcare environment ruled by inadequate reimbursement and “one size fits all” thinking.

There is a reason OMC struggles to avoid bankruptcy, and CEOs might not like being CEO.

Real solutions are well out of the control of the CEO, the hospital commissioners and the public.

Significant payer solutions are out of their control. The most recent example is the recent cuts in Medicaid signed into law on July 4 by President Trump which amounted to a cut of $1 trillion nationwide.

A recent headline reads OMC will feel it and not in a good way.

OMC is a unique rural hospital. Because of its size it is treated much the same as larger urban centers even though it does not have the advantage of a large enough patient population using ancillary services to make up for losses in essential services like labor and delivery.

The public does have the recourse of haranguing their state representatives to pass legislation to increase payments from the state and force-feeding phone calls to our representatives in the federal House and Senate to increase reimbursements for Medicare services to at least cover costs.

I will report that our representatives to the state have advocated for OMC and been successful in calling attention to OMC.

Federal is a more complicated endeavor, especially in an environment of “cutting back government.”

We might find it hard to think of OMC as government, but yet it is. OMC is governed by a publicly elected board and most of its reimbursement comes from the federal programs Medicare and Medicaid.

In search of solutions

By now, we in the public realize the problems of OMC are not the CEOs, the board members, or the staff; rather, it is a model of a community hospital that is destined to fail in the current environment.

We, the community, need to step up and step in to support the transition that will stabilize our healthcare system.

The questions have been posed for its survival and solutions are available, but OMC will most likely have a different relationship with the community. Most likely or unless a wizard of miracles appears, it will still be part of our community, but we will share ownership and governing.

We are a large and wise enough community to recognize need for compromise and participate in solutions and find resources to maintain a vital and resilient healthcare system.

Importantly, we can use our hearts and minds to learn the issues and solutions and we can use our voices to participate in supporting the right solutions — those that will, in fact, work for our community.