PORT ANGELES – Olympic Medical Center commissioners gathered Wednesday night at the same time, in the same place and wearing the same faces.
Their role, though, had changed greatly from the one they filled a year ago.
Events that could have created a family care crisis in Clallam County instead pulled the hospital into a broader – and, its leaders say, better – role in health care.
Commissioners arguably could change OMC’s formal name – Clallam County Hospital District No. 2 – and call it a health-care authority.
Today they find themselves overseeing a Port Angeles acute-care hospital, a cancer center in Sequim, two imaging centers, an orthopedic clinic, a women’s clinic, a home-health service and a primary care clinic in Port Angeles – plus others.
It was OMC’s reluctant venture into primary care last year that was its farthest step outside traditional hospital-based services.
Most residents of central and eastern Clallam County – the area the district covers – couldn’t have foreseen such a change until March 2002.
That’s when Virginia Mason Medical Center of Seattle announced it would close its Sequim satellite clinic.
