Many Sequim residents have expressed similar experiences. Very, very concerning. One reason some retirees move here is the proximity of medical services to their residences. I hope the situation improves and doesn't leave Sequim without hospital and clinic services. I am one of the lucky ones as my medical needs are not urgent. However, I am deeply concerned for those who need prompt and immediate care. Thank you, Jeff, for keeping us updated. It is very disappointing to know that the 3 County Commissioners don't fight for the taxpayers. We see this weekly, as they always vote for the possible optics that make them appear philanthropic with other people's money. How many people have they hurt with their prideful attitude? The list grows longer every week. Take care everyone.
Thanks for being so dedicated Denise. I thoroughly enjoy your episodes on "Jeff's People." You spit way less pea soup, throw way less sand and have this way of yours that kills them just the same.
Thank you, John. I value you and your tutorials every meeting. You are a wealth of information and you help so many understand the depth of deception in the county. See you next week!
Are you two speaking with some secret code? LOL "See you next week at the secret meeting. Why wasn't I invited to the secret QAnon meetings I hear so much about?
Give the hospital to the Tribe-- with all their federal doles and Commissioners sucking up, they will make the hospital readily available...... to Tribal patients.
I love your moniker. Eventually taxation will have the representation of the indigent class which seems to grow with the same correlation as my federal income tax.
Wasn't this the exact problem that Serenity House ran into a decade ago. The constant need to acquire new land, offices, buildings, without doing the necessary groundwork to make a profit off of the purchases? It seems like they run on the premise that 'he who dies with the most land wins' yet they do precious little to add to the value of their practice. Great article, Jeff!
OMC should sell it's unused properties-- it's not like they need them for expansion. And, perhaps it needs to restructure its books from the top down. I'll bet there are some highly paid administrators who are clearly not doing their jobs. Letting go of one or more would greatly reduce overhead and free funds for needed services and doctors.
First, they allowed tribal checkering in the county and city. Not to preserve cultural space or anything else. They did it to get financial advantages. Something Congress said they could not do. Our Commissioners allowed both checkering and financial advantages..
Then, they allowed tribal medical facilities to encroach upon non-tribal clientele. Boom.
"Compensation mechanism " for "Colonization. They set up a monopoly.
Senator Hawley from Missouri is trying to get another rural hospital bill passed. I would right letters to him explaining what the situation is here. We need more than money we need ant- trust laws to be enforced.
The global consortium violated federal tribal land trust law to create a "compensation mechanism" to "heal a broken relationship" because of "colonization.
At this point in time, they are laying the Sequim plan out in Forks.
Who inside Sequim is helped by the Mat Clinic. The Tribe is similar to a Kafka Novel. It has it's hands everywhere. My federal tax bracket is 33% and I am retired. If we wish to increase the tax base for social programs our government agencies should concentrate upon instead of attracting more indigents into our our community AKA affordable housing the opposite should occur. That would increase the tax base.
There was no reason for that facility to exist. Off topic drug rehab is a farce. It is a government induced fraud. If I design an experiment featuring 100 junkies and 50% die of overdose the success rate is improved because dead people are not addicted to drugs.
The term "Indian Country" is now meaningless. "Indian Country "now extends to the City and County, where non-tribal economic interests were supposed to be separate. Now, they are not only co-mingled, they are given economic advantages in the non-tribal economy. Its a huge anti -trust violation.
The NODC, SERN and NOPLE was the global consortium that violated federal laws, the Constitution and they are in contempt of Congress.
Its just more jumping from one foot to the other. On the one hand we have a whole Congressional and agency policy to stop "checkering" and "fractioning' on the other here locally they have used it for a tribal economic advantage, while the agency claims fractioning causes harm to the tribes.
This is all backwards now. We have three and a half years to undo what the global consortium has done.
Fractionated ownership and the checkerboard nature of land ownership patterns (i.e., trust lands, fee lands, and lands owned by Tribes and individuals throughout a reservation) cause major challenges for Tribes that impact their ability to exercise Tribal sovereignty and self-determination. Specifically:
The checkerboard ownership pattern creates jurisdictional challenges and ties up land within the reservation boundaries, making it difficult to pursue economic development and infrastructure projects;
Fractionated ownership can make it hard to protect or obtain access to sacred and/or cultural sites; and
Income received from the land, such as lease income, can be so divided that individual owners may receive just a few cents based on their fractional share.
My son is disabled due to three strokes and has many health issues. He has blood in his urine and the first appointment he can get with a urologist is December 30th. He has decided to try Silverdale. We deserve better than this!
Real estate is one way of keeping money off the books.
OMC should sell or use the former clinic building at 8th and Cherry in PA, too. There are only about five employees working there in clerical and administrative roles.
Ditto with selling the property on 5th Street which OMC purchased for a child care facility someday. Unload it!
OMC wanted to turn the former Wells Fargo building into a pharmacy, especially now that Rite Aid is gone. But OMC employees tell me that it can’t even completely and reliably staff its own in-house pharmacy.
In June 2017, the acting DOI Deputy Secretary testified before the House Subcommittee on Indian, Insular, and Alaska Native Affairs that taking off-reservation land into trust also has the potential to cause jurisdictional uncertainties and can have tax and economic consequences for non-Indian communities.122
So when the Commissioners stand by and do nothing on these transfers they are giving tacit approval for bad "economic consequences for non-indian communities."
14 years of Commissioners held the cards. What stinks is for all 14 years they were attached to a global consortium which sought those bad economic consequences to "heal a broken relationship."
Bad economic consequences for our hospitals, our schools, our casinos, our gas stations, our construction companies, our fishermen...
The Denise Lapio experience is telling example of how broken Peninsula health care is. I believe somewhere out there exists Hospital specialists, much like specialists for failing banks. We need an objective look, appraisal and report card of the entire OMC operation. I get the swoon over more money for more experts, but this is recurring problem that requires a new approach. If free care for the indigent looms large, let's look into it. I'm sure population density or the lack of is a component, so let's look into it. Perhaps a single hospital center for Bremerton through Forks with satellite clinics. Traveling care might be more efficient than traveling patients. Clearly I do not have an answer, but again, I'm betting someone does.
Jeff I believe that when representing an important idea an analogy is important and yours was accurate. Yet we all know that the hypothetical female high school student wearing a plaid design changed her wardrobe at a public restroom before her date with the quarterback
(1) OMC Physician Clinics are 100% accepting new patients and there is a minimal wait to get scheduled.
(2) It is a common practice in medical clinics that if a patient does not engage with services within a three year period, they are notified by at least two letters in the US mail, and asked to re-engage with services. If they do not respond or do not make an appointment, then they are dropped from the patient rolls or provider panels.
(3) If desired, a patient in this situation can absolutely get reestablished as a patient.
I always recommend folks in Sequim consider visiting the Dungeness Valley Health and Wellness Clinic for their healthcare needs. It’s a great place to get care when you are waiting to be seen by a primary care clinic or if you need prescription refills, etc..
Voters need to quit believing the fear mongers that want more tax $$$ to squander,'the hospital will shut down,the city and county services will not be able to operate safely,schools and public roads are crumbling,squanders just want more $$$ squander for wasteful issues and making sure there is plenty of $$$ in coffers for cost of living increases that they help generate.
We’ve got to have a County water position because the county has a 14 million $$$ surplus, just ask the charter water committee people & all the untruths they pushed Monday night.
I highly recommend North Olympic Health Network in Port Angeles. There are 2 facilities just blocks apart, easy to get an appt and the staff is amazing.
Clallam County residents deserve answers. But the challenges at Olympic Medical Center (OMC) aren’t happening in a vacuum, they’re part of a nationwide healthcare crisis, now compounded by the passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” on July 4th. That budget gutted over $1 trillion from Medicaid and ACA support, pushed strict new eligibility requirements, and set off ripple effects that rural hospitals like OMC are already feeling. Washington state is projected to lose $41 billion in Medicaid funding. That’s not just bad luck, it’s a structural collapse dressed up as fiscal policy.
So yes, people are frustrated. They were told the levy would preserve care, and now they're being turned away. But blaming local officials for every downstream effect ignores the tidal wave of reimbursement cuts, staff shortages, and demand spikes hospitals are forced to navigate. OMC pausing new patient intake isn’t ideal, it’s triage.
As for the hospital’s real estate portfolio: “vacant” doesn’t mean “wasteful.” Strategic properties could be used for future clinics, community partnerships, or long-term planning. Selling off assets for short-term optics risks trading tomorrow’s solutions for today’s outrage.
And the land donation to the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe? It wasn’t a giveaway. It expanded healthcare capacity regionally and helped absorb overflow OMC couldn’t serve. That’s not sabotage, it is strategy.
Transparency matters. Accountability matters. But if we want real oversight, let’s start by recognizing the policies coming out of D.C. are starving the system. Local leaders may be silent--but the noise in Congress is deafening.
If you're looking for a real villain in this story, look 2,800 miles east, where Congress just gutted the lifeline rural hospitals depended on, then called it progress.
P.S. If you’re heading to the Elks Lodge tonight for Glen Morgan’s DOGE training, bring $15 and low expectations. You won’t learn how to fix healthcare, but you might learn how to file a records request for the receipt
PRA is dead. Arthur West has all but retired,,, Morgan's results are on behalf of the state. They get the money not Glen. Every Swastikas' sign in Olympia is pointed at him.
Appreciate you bringing in the WSHA report, Aleta, it paints a stark picture of continued financial losses across Washington’s hospitals, even if 2023 wasn’t quite as dire as 2022. I agree that eight straight quarters of negative margins and depleted reserves point to a system under serious pressure.
I’m curious though, are you pointing to this data as support for Clallam’s current hospital struggles and the need for systemic reform, or suggesting the picture isn’t as urgent as some are making it out to be? I ask because it sounds like we might actually be aligned on the big issue here: local hospitals are still in crisis, and the budget trajectory from D.C. seems likely to compound that.
And respectfully, I’m not sure how Dr. Fauci factors into this current funding conversation. He retired in 2022 and wasn’t involved in the policy decisions shaping rural healthcare now. Would love to keep the focus on the funding mechanics and public accountability if you’re game.
Thanks for the clarification, Aleta. I hear you on the concern that Washington’s system might be overly dependent on federal dollars, especially Medicaid, and I agree that sustainability has to include more than just emergency funding and tax hikes.
That said, I’m not convinced that selling off properties or merging with a larger hospital system is a magic bullet. Many hospital mergers in Washington have led to reduced services, higher costs, and fewer local decisions--particularly for rural communities. Selling assets could help in the short term, but it might also limit future options, especially if those properties were acquired with long-term strategic goals in mind.
The financial pressure is real, and so is the need for accountability. I just think it's worth zooming out and recognizing that local choices are being made in a landscape shaped heavily by national policy shifts, including massive federal cuts that are already impacting reimbursement rates and staffing levels.
I appreciate you keeping the conversation focused on actual solutions.
Many Sequim residents have expressed similar experiences. Very, very concerning. One reason some retirees move here is the proximity of medical services to their residences. I hope the situation improves and doesn't leave Sequim without hospital and clinic services. I am one of the lucky ones as my medical needs are not urgent. However, I am deeply concerned for those who need prompt and immediate care. Thank you, Jeff, for keeping us updated. It is very disappointing to know that the 3 County Commissioners don't fight for the taxpayers. We see this weekly, as they always vote for the possible optics that make them appear philanthropic with other people's money. How many people have they hurt with their prideful attitude? The list grows longer every week. Take care everyone.
Thanks for being so dedicated Denise. I thoroughly enjoy your episodes on "Jeff's People." You spit way less pea soup, throw way less sand and have this way of yours that kills them just the same.
Thank you, John. I value you and your tutorials every meeting. You are a wealth of information and you help so many understand the depth of deception in the county. See you next week!
Are you two speaking with some secret code? LOL "See you next week at the secret meeting. Why wasn't I invited to the secret QAnon meetings I hear so much about?
Everyone is invited: Tuesday 10:00am Board of County Commissioners regular meeting at PA Courthouse. See you there, Steve O.
Solution <sarcasm ON>
Give the hospital to the Tribe-- with all their federal doles and Commissioners sucking up, they will make the hospital readily available...... to Tribal patients.
Once again another compelling article, thanks Jeff. And it could not of come at a better time 😏. Another example of taxation without representation!
I love your moniker. Eventually taxation will have the representation of the indigent class which seems to grow with the same correlation as my federal income tax.
Wasn't this the exact problem that Serenity House ran into a decade ago. The constant need to acquire new land, offices, buildings, without doing the necessary groundwork to make a profit off of the purchases? It seems like they run on the premise that 'he who dies with the most land wins' yet they do precious little to add to the value of their practice. Great article, Jeff!
Heck, Jeff, you could teach the DOGE seminar! Excellent journalism. We in Clallam County are so lucky to have you.
OMC should sell it's unused properties-- it's not like they need them for expansion. And, perhaps it needs to restructure its books from the top down. I'll bet there are some highly paid administrators who are clearly not doing their jobs. Letting go of one or more would greatly reduce overhead and free funds for needed services and doctors.
There are always fat ducks in those kinds of parks.
They have done what Congress said they cannot do.
https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/R/PDF/R46647/R46647.5.pdf
First, they allowed tribal checkering in the county and city. Not to preserve cultural space or anything else. They did it to get financial advantages. Something Congress said they could not do. Our Commissioners allowed both checkering and financial advantages..
Then, they allowed tribal medical facilities to encroach upon non-tribal clientele. Boom.
"Compensation mechanism " for "Colonization. They set up a monopoly.
Senator Hawley from Missouri is trying to get another rural hospital bill passed. I would right letters to him explaining what the situation is here. We need more than money we need ant- trust laws to be enforced.
The Mat clinic never should have been built. Jamestown is everywhere. That was not supposed to happen by law.
The global consortium violated federal tribal land trust law to create a "compensation mechanism" to "heal a broken relationship" because of "colonization.
At this point in time, they are laying the Sequim plan out in Forks.
Only Europeans win a battle then pay for the damage to the enemy's property.
Who inside Sequim is helped by the Mat Clinic. The Tribe is similar to a Kafka Novel. It has it's hands everywhere. My federal tax bracket is 33% and I am retired. If we wish to increase the tax base for social programs our government agencies should concentrate upon instead of attracting more indigents into our our community AKA affordable housing the opposite should occur. That would increase the tax base.
There was no reason for that facility to exist. Off topic drug rehab is a farce. It is a government induced fraud. If I design an experiment featuring 100 junkies and 50% die of overdose the success rate is improved because dead people are not addicted to drugs.
L.A. is celebrating a decrease in homelessness. Guess what caused the slight decrease? Overdose deaths.
The term "Indian Country" is now meaningless. "Indian Country "now extends to the City and County, where non-tribal economic interests were supposed to be separate. Now, they are not only co-mingled, they are given economic advantages in the non-tribal economy. Its a huge anti -trust violation.
The NODC, SERN and NOPLE was the global consortium that violated federal laws, the Constitution and they are in contempt of Congress.
Its just more jumping from one foot to the other. On the one hand we have a whole Congressional and agency policy to stop "checkering" and "fractioning' on the other here locally they have used it for a tribal economic advantage, while the agency claims fractioning causes harm to the tribes.
This is all backwards now. We have three and a half years to undo what the global consortium has done.
https://www.doi.gov/buybackprogram/fractionation
Fractionated ownership and the checkerboard nature of land ownership patterns (i.e., trust lands, fee lands, and lands owned by Tribes and individuals throughout a reservation) cause major challenges for Tribes that impact their ability to exercise Tribal sovereignty and self-determination. Specifically:
The checkerboard ownership pattern creates jurisdictional challenges and ties up land within the reservation boundaries, making it difficult to pursue economic development and infrastructure projects;
Fractionated ownership can make it hard to protect or obtain access to sacred and/or cultural sites; and
Income received from the land, such as lease income, can be so divided that individual owners may receive just a few cents based on their fractional share.
My son is disabled due to three strokes and has many health issues. He has blood in his urine and the first appointment he can get with a urologist is December 30th. He has decided to try Silverdale. We deserve better than this!
Real estate is one way of keeping money off the books.
OMC should sell or use the former clinic building at 8th and Cherry in PA, too. There are only about five employees working there in clerical and administrative roles.
Ditto with selling the property on 5th Street which OMC purchased for a child care facility someday. Unload it!
OMC wanted to turn the former Wells Fargo building into a pharmacy, especially now that Rite Aid is gone. But OMC employees tell me that it can’t even completely and reliably staff its own in-house pharmacy.
A special BOCC mtg yesterday to call a
BOCC MTG JULY 30 TO INCREASE TAX LEVY LID to maintain essential CO seevices and get it on the November Ballot in time. .
Be prepared. They limited all comments to a total of ten minutes yesterday.
Good catch, M.B. I wasn't aware of this. Thanks.
also BOCC mtg with PUD and PORT
July 28 at 1 p.m. Maybe they will have something to say or better yet listen to.
BOCC BOHICA
https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/R/PDF/R46647/R46647.5.pdf
In June 2017, the acting DOI Deputy Secretary testified before the House Subcommittee on Indian, Insular, and Alaska Native Affairs that taking off-reservation land into trust also has the potential to cause jurisdictional uncertainties and can have tax and economic consequences for non-Indian communities.122
So when the Commissioners stand by and do nothing on these transfers they are giving tacit approval for bad "economic consequences for non-indian communities."
14 years of Commissioners held the cards. What stinks is for all 14 years they were attached to a global consortium which sought those bad economic consequences to "heal a broken relationship."
Bad economic consequences for our hospitals, our schools, our casinos, our gas stations, our construction companies, our fishermen...
Our property owners....
The Denise Lapio experience is telling example of how broken Peninsula health care is. I believe somewhere out there exists Hospital specialists, much like specialists for failing banks. We need an objective look, appraisal and report card of the entire OMC operation. I get the swoon over more money for more experts, but this is recurring problem that requires a new approach. If free care for the indigent looms large, let's look into it. I'm sure population density or the lack of is a component, so let's look into it. Perhaps a single hospital center for Bremerton through Forks with satellite clinics. Traveling care might be more efficient than traveling patients. Clearly I do not have an answer, but again, I'm betting someone does.
Jeff I believe that when representing an important idea an analogy is important and yours was accurate. Yet we all know that the hypothetical female high school student wearing a plaid design changed her wardrobe at a public restroom before her date with the quarterback
That highschool student was ME!
(1) OMC Physician Clinics are 100% accepting new patients and there is a minimal wait to get scheduled.
(2) It is a common practice in medical clinics that if a patient does not engage with services within a three year period, they are notified by at least two letters in the US mail, and asked to re-engage with services. If they do not respond or do not make an appointment, then they are dropped from the patient rolls or provider panels.
(3) If desired, a patient in this situation can absolutely get reestablished as a patient.
Thank you. Is the problem of intaking new patients specific to just the Sequim campus?
OMC has recently onboarded new primary care providers who are accepting new patients in Sequim and Port Angeles.
Thank you for the update. I just called Sequim. They are currently booked out until October for establishing primary care.
I always recommend folks in Sequim consider visiting the Dungeness Valley Health and Wellness Clinic for their healthcare needs. It’s a great place to get care when you are waiting to be seen by a primary care clinic or if you need prescription refills, etc..
https://www.sequimfreeclinic.org/
Voters need to quit believing the fear mongers that want more tax $$$ to squander,'the hospital will shut down,the city and county services will not be able to operate safely,schools and public roads are crumbling,squanders just want more $$$ squander for wasteful issues and making sure there is plenty of $$$ in coffers for cost of living increases that they help generate.
We’ve got to have a County water position because the county has a 14 million $$$ surplus, just ask the charter water committee people & all the untruths they pushed Monday night.
If county has so much surplus $$$ then start fixing some alley's roads that have been neglected for decades.
I highly recommend North Olympic Health Network in Port Angeles. There are 2 facilities just blocks apart, easy to get an appt and the staff is amazing.
North Olympic HC may be excellent for day to day health care, but I don't think they do surgery or intensive care.
NOHN is highly dependent on Medicaid funding. Wait until the bad news comes out about NOHN not being able to cover all the bases.
Surely you are being sarcastic. I have been on "the wait list" to be a patient off-and-on for more than a decade.
Clallam County residents deserve answers. But the challenges at Olympic Medical Center (OMC) aren’t happening in a vacuum, they’re part of a nationwide healthcare crisis, now compounded by the passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” on July 4th. That budget gutted over $1 trillion from Medicaid and ACA support, pushed strict new eligibility requirements, and set off ripple effects that rural hospitals like OMC are already feeling. Washington state is projected to lose $41 billion in Medicaid funding. That’s not just bad luck, it’s a structural collapse dressed up as fiscal policy.
So yes, people are frustrated. They were told the levy would preserve care, and now they're being turned away. But blaming local officials for every downstream effect ignores the tidal wave of reimbursement cuts, staff shortages, and demand spikes hospitals are forced to navigate. OMC pausing new patient intake isn’t ideal, it’s triage.
As for the hospital’s real estate portfolio: “vacant” doesn’t mean “wasteful.” Strategic properties could be used for future clinics, community partnerships, or long-term planning. Selling off assets for short-term optics risks trading tomorrow’s solutions for today’s outrage.
And the land donation to the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe? It wasn’t a giveaway. It expanded healthcare capacity regionally and helped absorb overflow OMC couldn’t serve. That’s not sabotage, it is strategy.
Transparency matters. Accountability matters. But if we want real oversight, let’s start by recognizing the policies coming out of D.C. are starving the system. Local leaders may be silent--but the noise in Congress is deafening.
If you're looking for a real villain in this story, look 2,800 miles east, where Congress just gutted the lifeline rural hospitals depended on, then called it progress.
P.S. If you’re heading to the Elks Lodge tonight for Glen Morgan’s DOGE training, bring $15 and low expectations. You won’t learn how to fix healthcare, but you might learn how to file a records request for the receipt
Its checkering to gain an economic advantage.
PRA is dead. Arthur West has all but retired,,, Morgan's results are on behalf of the state. They get the money not Glen. Every Swastikas' sign in Olympia is pointed at him.
Appreciate you bringing in the WSHA report, Aleta, it paints a stark picture of continued financial losses across Washington’s hospitals, even if 2023 wasn’t quite as dire as 2022. I agree that eight straight quarters of negative margins and depleted reserves point to a system under serious pressure.
I’m curious though, are you pointing to this data as support for Clallam’s current hospital struggles and the need for systemic reform, or suggesting the picture isn’t as urgent as some are making it out to be? I ask because it sounds like we might actually be aligned on the big issue here: local hospitals are still in crisis, and the budget trajectory from D.C. seems likely to compound that.
And respectfully, I’m not sure how Dr. Fauci factors into this current funding conversation. He retired in 2022 and wasn’t involved in the policy decisions shaping rural healthcare now. Would love to keep the focus on the funding mechanics and public accountability if you’re game.
Thanks for the clarification, Aleta. I hear you on the concern that Washington’s system might be overly dependent on federal dollars, especially Medicaid, and I agree that sustainability has to include more than just emergency funding and tax hikes.
That said, I’m not convinced that selling off properties or merging with a larger hospital system is a magic bullet. Many hospital mergers in Washington have led to reduced services, higher costs, and fewer local decisions--particularly for rural communities. Selling assets could help in the short term, but it might also limit future options, especially if those properties were acquired with long-term strategic goals in mind.
The financial pressure is real, and so is the need for accountability. I just think it's worth zooming out and recognizing that local choices are being made in a landscape shaped heavily by national policy shifts, including massive federal cuts that are already impacting reimbursement rates and staffing levels.
I appreciate you keeping the conversation focused on actual solutions.