By Marc J. Elzenbeck
Living on the Island means forgoing some healthcare options. We all knew that going in, and many older residents are so adversely impacted they have to move away.
Recent surveys have listed healthcare access, particularly to urgent care, as a top concern. If you slice deep into your thumb, if your kid runs a 106 degree fever, or you decide to use a chainsaw at night, best make sure it’s before the last ferry leaves. Nothing will change that soon.
While we still have a geographically constrained reality, ignoring fundamental improvements would be a mistake. It’s time to recognize jobs well done. Voters overwhelmingly approved property tax increases to improve care during business hours. First, by establishing the Vashon Health Care District (VHCD); second, by extending a lavish increase to Vashon Island Fire and Rescue (VIFR); and finally, by continuing to pay for Medic One, a national leader in ambulance service quality.
Together, these add up to well over $1000 in taxes per Island resident every year. That’s a ton of money. Has the investment been worth it?
It’s starting to look like it has. By acumen or luck, VHCD hit a home run getting the SeaMar Community Health Clinic onto Vashon. Due to a past round robin of poorly performing hospital-connected providers, many of us have grown accustomed to fulfilling their medical needs off-island. (Urgent Care options are available from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. not far from the north and south ends.) Many still voice their complaints and impatience, but we no longer see or hear about steady disappointment with the services we’ve got. All indications point to high satisfaction. SeaMar even answers their phone.
SeaMar brings much more to the community than first meets the eye, and VHCD deserves more credit for luring it here. It no longer takes proffered financial support, knows how to run a huge array of services out of clinics and, most importantly, is able to stay afloat on Vashon. By inception and design, SeaMar specializes in catering to the needs of underserved communities. Its track record of proliferation in western Washington is unmatched; it now has 90 medical and dental clinics.
SeaMar building a new clinic in town with its own finances demonstrates commitment as it plans to expand into dental, plus making affordable housing for staff. SeaMar possesses the organizational expertise for growth, elsewhere providing maternity, pharmacy, nutrition, and social services, long-term facility based care, plus outpatient and inpatient behavioral health and substance abuse treatment.
In his article, my friend and neighbor Dr. Steve Nourse indicates that there is a turf battle between VIFR and VHCD over the privilege of providing expanded Mobile Health, de facto urgent care services, during business hours. He favors VIFR’s internal solution, and may well prove to be right. Battles can be wasteful, conflict can be uncomfortable, but there are different ways to view this. Competition tends to bring out the best in its participants. Lack of competition tends to foster complacency and limited transparency.
In that spirit, we should welcome this bake-off as an old-fashioned “Build vs Buy” situation.
For its part, the VHCD simply seems to be following through on its voter mandate to further improve the level of care available on the Island. It has the budget to do so, and is staying well within it. Like SeaMar, Dispatch Health is a proven specialist in its field. All they do is provide mobile urgent care, and their own rapid growth has likewise been achieved by providing a good solution to underserved areas.
With a track record of making a wise and deliberate key partner choice, VHCD deserves the courtesy of some trust. Assuming VIFR secures the extra few-odd hundred thousand dollars it seeks for its Mobile Health plan, at the end of the next two years, we’ll have a pretty good idea of which service is most proficient. Hopefully, they’ll both prove to be equally so, and during the daytime, for once, we’ll have more health care options than we know what to do with. Let’s find out.