OMC board orders review of pediatric services

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, June 10, 2026

The Olympic Medical Center board has directed interim CEO Mark Gregson to have the hospital’s finance committee evaluate models for ensuring the continuity of pediatric services following public testimony from members of the Children’s Clinic who said the department faces growing uncertainty about its future.

Commissioner Dr. Gerald Stephanz put forth the measure, citing urgency around the department’s staffing losses and the risk posed by pending federal Medicaid changes.

During public comment at the Wednesday, June 3 board meeting, Dr. Cynthia West said the clinic has lost a physician and a physician’s assistant in recent months, and neither position has been approved for recruitment.

“Our service line is really functioning currently in an unsustainable way and, in my view, it’s a really high risk of collapse,” West said.

Physician’s assistant Amy Miller said the eight remaining staff members are trying to do the work of 10 people.

“We are on the edge,” Miller said. “The last few providers we recruited took three years.”

West said the five pediatricians split their time between the outpatient clinic and around-the-clock coverage of the hospital’s newborn nursery, including attending high-risk deliveries and caring for premature infants.

Advanced nurse practitioner Michelle Turner, whose father was a pediatrician in the community, warned the board that, “Possibly you’re going to lose your pediatric group in Port Angeles.”

Miller drew a direct line between pediatric staffing and the hospital’s ability to fulfill its mission.

“Without the care that our pediatricians provide, OB will not be there,” she said. “If you don’t have someone there to take care of babies in distress, we can’t do deliveries. If you can’t take care of moms, and you can’t take care of babies, can you really take care of families?”

Commissioner Penney Sanders, noting that consulting firm Kaufman Hall was conducting an operational review of OMC required by UW Medicine as part of a non-binding letter of intent, argued the board should wait for those findings before it acts.

“I understand the concern and I read the letters, I listened to people today,” Sanders said, “but I just feel like the timing on this needs to hold a bit.”

Sanders ultimately joined the rest of the board in supporting the motion, which passed unanimously.

Stephanz pointed to public comment in which Children’s Clinic staff said about 75 percent of their patients are on Medicaid, making the department particularly vulnerable to coverage changes coming with H.R. 1, the reconciliation bill known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”

Interim CFO Dennis Stillman described the core concern: people who currently qualify for Medicaid could lose coverage if they cannot document 80 hours per month of work or community service. Those patients will still need care, he said, but they would arrive without insurance.

Stillman said it is too early to build a formal budget around the potential consequences.

“I can’t just pick a number on the impact from Medicaid,” he said. “You can’t build a budget on a guess.”

He said the finance committee would hear a presentation on patient financial counseling and charity care in June as a first step in preparing for the impending changes.

Stephanz said OMC should take a leadership role in working with its partners, including the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, the North Olympic Healthcare Network, the Port Angeles School District, Peninsula Behavioral Health and others to identify at-risk residents and document their eligibility before they lose their coverage.

“We need to have a structure in place,” he said.

State survey

Gregson reported that the state Department of Health conducted a survey at OMC in late May and cleared several items from a September findings list.

However, surveyors identified one item that Gregson confirmed is in immediate jeopardy and requires immediate attention — a documentation deficiency related to care provided to patients in the emergency room under suicide prevention protocols.

He said a corrective work plan was developed and surveyors returned the following morning and cleared the finding. He emphasized that patients had received appropriate care and no harm had resulted from the deficiency.

Gregson said the finding could generate follow-up from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

He said OMC has received positive results from a series of other recent surveys by different agencies and expressed frustration that the state’s findings diverged from those outcomes.

“I respectfully believe that we are not being held to the standard that we’ve received from others,” he said.

This was at least the second immediate jeopardy finding that state Department of Health surveyors have found at OMC within the past year.

An immediate jeopardy finding — the most serious deficiency hospital surveyors can cite during an inspection — means a hospital’s noncompliance has caused, or is likely to cause, serious injury, harm or death to a patient and must be addressed immediately.

Gregson also addressed concerns about provider departures, saying that 23 of 76 providers had left since August and 13 had been hired.

“We would prefer that people want to stay and continue to be involved, but in any case, it’s too important for us not to continue to move ahead and fill jobs,” he said.