PORT ANGELES — The Olympic Medical Center Board of Commissioners unanimously approved the appointment of interim CEO Mark Gregson.
“I have a great deal of respect for what this organization means to the community,” Gregson said. “It’s extremely important on a lot of levels, but number one is care and services to patients, so that will always be our first and primary focus.”
OMC will pay executive search firm WittKieffer $12,500 a week for Gregson’s services, in addition to lodging and travel.
Significant progress has been made to bring OMC into compliance with Centers for Medicare and Medicaid standards, although much remains to be done, Chief Medical Officer Scott Kennedy and Director of Quality Support Services Liz Uraga told the hospital’s board of commissioners at their meeting on Wednesday.
“There’s been a lot of good work going on across many departments, frontline, leadership and more,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy and Uraga said the hospital has resolved many of the deficiencies found by the state Department of Health that led to a CMS notification that its Medicare contract would be terminated on Aug. 15. That date has been extended to Sept. 30.
Most of the deficiencies that have been resolved were related to poor documentation practices. Failing to screen patients for suicide and elopement risk and to remove expired medical supplies also were resolved.
“Resolved doesn’t mean we’ll never make another mistake in that area again, it means we’re highly reliable at that point,” Uraga said.
“In the most recent DOH visit (Aug. 5-7), and even for some of the previous visits, we were able to not receive a citation on the same finding, so we know our corrective action plan was successful,” Uraga said. “Our challenge for these will be to sustain that success going forward.”
The August visit was the third time since its initial survey in February that the Department of Health had reinspected OMC. On each successive return, it found new and repeat deficiencies that had not been fixed.
Kennedy and Uraga said they would submit a new plan of action in response to the report generated by the August visit. They anticipated the Department of Health would return in mid-September, although they did not know a specific date because the visits are always unannounced.
Timely and accurate reporting in Epic, the electronic health record software OMC uses, has been at the root of many of the documentation deficiencies found by the Department of Health, Kennedy said.
The hospital team has been investigating ways the software could be streamlined and made more efficient, thus lessening the burden on staff and preventing the kind of violations it has received.
“We’re not under the microscope for quality of care, we’re under the microscope for paperwork,” Commissioner John Nutter said. “Yes, we need to improve our documentation. Yes, documentation is very important. Let’s fix it and move on.”
In other board action, it unanimously approved a resolution to formally recognize former CEO Darryl Wolfe for his leadership and contributions to OMC.
Wolfe, whose last day was Tuesday, was hired as a financial analyst in 2006 and rose to become CEO in August 2020.
The resolution highlighted Wolfe’s advocacy for improving federal funding for hospitals, advancing strong community partnerships, guiding the hospital through the COVID-19 pandemic and steering the campaign for the 2024 levy lid lift.
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Reporter Paula Hunt can be reached by email at paula.hunt@peninsuladailynews.com.
