PORT ANGELES, Wash.—The Olympic Medical Center (OMC) received a letter from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) last May 12 that all payments for treatment of Medicare patients will be terminated on August 15 unless immediate action is taken to bring the hospital into compliance with Medicare guidelines.
OMC has been scrambling ever since to correct deficiencies and bring the hospital into compliance. So far, inspectors have rejected the efforts of the hospital staff as insufficient to achieve compliance.
CMS is headed by Mehmet Oz, the rabid MAGA Republican intent on enforcing President Trump’s “Big Beautiful” Budget Reconciliation that will impose nearly a trillion dollars in Medicaid cuts, targeting especially rural hospitals across the nation. CMS is eager to terminate funding for OMC, especially since the original complaint came from the Washington State Department of Health (DOH). People here, facing loss of their hospital, the largest employer in Clallam County with 1,600 jobs, cannot fathom why DOH would send such a complaint to CMS and Mehmet Oz!
OMC is the only full-service hospital on the rural, isolated Olympic Peninsula serving over 100,000 people; 85% of its patients are either on Medicare or Medicaid. OMC is chronically in debt, on the brink of bankruptcy because the Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates are so low. In 2022, OMC lost $28 million because of rising costs and ruinously low Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement.
Now, with the CMS notice of termination of Medicare payments, OMC is literally facing outright closure.
OMC’s CEO, Darryl Wolfe, suddenly resigned July 31, citing “personal” reasons, but he is known to oppose the takeover of OMC, a public hospital, by profit-seeking private equity firms. Unlike private hospitals, OMC has a publicly stated commitment to treat everyone who needs care, regardless of ability to pay.
OMC has been in secret negotiations with both private and public hospital chains seeking a partnership that restores financial stability. The latest disclosure is that OMC is seeking a partnership with the University of Washington hospital, a step that would preserve OMC’s public, secular status since UW Hospital is also public.
All major decisions by OMC are made by an elected Executive Board. Currently, three of the seven nonpartisan commissioner positions on the Board are up for election in the Nov. 4 general election.
Three of the candidates were guests at a Clallam County Democratic Party picnic Saturday, August 9, in Jamestown. Dr. Gerald Stephanz was one of the candidates. He is the Medical Director of the Olympic Peninsula Community Clinic—which provides free treatment for the thousands without health care here on the peninsula—Dr. Stephanz, who is running against incumbent Ann Henninger, told the crowd that OMC is in “Death-con 1,” a military term for the most dangerous, life-threatening condition. He urged an outpouring of votes to elect an OMC Executive Board that will save the hospital from closure, determined to keep OMC open and full-service.
Dr. Carlene Benson joked that in her years as an OMC physician, she has probably treated a majority of the picnickers. She, too, urged the crowd to vote and join in the struggle to keep the hospital open.
Retired nurse-practitioner, Laurie Force, is running against Penny Sanders to fill the position vacated by Phyllis Bernard. Force said she is flatly opposed to any scheme to turn OMC over to a “private-equity” corporation determined to reap profits. She urged the crowd to vote for her, promising to fight to preserve OMC as a public hospital, secular, and providing full reproductive care, including abortions, and “end of life” care.
“Now is the time for maximum transparency,” she said. “There needs to be more outreach into the community. People need to know better the kinds of options and what are the trade-offs.”
Dr. Stephaniz told this reporter that he is shocked that many people don’t know that they can vote for him, for all three candidates on the ballot. The election rules for the OMJC Executive Board were changed. All candidates for the Board, he said, run at large, and everyone is entitled to vote.
OMC first opened as Port Angeles Memorial Hospital on Nov. 1, 1951. A moving force in organizing massive public support for the hospital was Vivian Gaboury, then chairperson of the Clallam County Communist Party. The main jobs in the region were logging, saw mills and paper mills, farming, and commercial fishing—all extremely hazardous jobs.
Vivian Gaboury knocked, literally, on thousands of doors, spoke to union meetings, church congregations, the Grange, pleading that a public hospital is urgently needed to treat injured workers—her husband, Harvey, a laborer, her son Fred, a logger. She mobilized a powerful movement, and the hospital opened, publicly owned with a commitment to treat everyone. Now, instead of loggers, farmers, and millworkers, it is mainly senior citizens on Medicare who visit OMC. In 2022, the latest statistic available, OMC treated 47,512 patients, about 130 patients each day. The Emergency Room treats between 60 and 90 patients each day.
This reporter had his gall bladder removed at OMC last fall, a six-hour operation by a superb surgeon, Dr. Sandra Tatro, who toiled six hours to extract the gangrene-infected organ. “Good morning!” she said cheerily when she visited me in my hospital room the next day. “Tim Wheeler, you are lucky to be alive!”
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