Tucked away in a corner of a north Everett shopping center is a door that opens on hope for people without health insurance.
A new medical clinic that opens Monday is expected to serve thousands of men, women and children who otherwise would have no place to get regular health care.
Those people have Angie Drayton, Brandi Wiggins and other single mothers in a WorkFirst job-training class to thank.
"This is awesome," Drayton said during a tour the new clinic. "Almost unreal."
Over the past 10 months, Dr. Tony Roon of Providence Everett Medical Center has led an effort among local groups, businesses and private donors, raising more than $1 million to help the uninsured and those with low incomes get medical care.
The complications of medical regulations and costs had already taken their toll on certain types of health care in 2002 when Drayton and Wiggins decided to bring attention to the problems they were having in getting doctors’ appointments through state programs.
The state that year named Snohomish County one of the three worst counties for patients to get health care through Medicaid, the state program that pays for medical care for families on welfare.
At the same time, a Snohomish County Medical Society survey showed that only 5 percent of 325 primary care doctors working in the county’s private medical clinics were accepting new Medicaid patients.
Today, no one knows how many people in Snohomish County are without health insurance. The state does not keep those numbers.
Doctors and medical professionals, however, see the crowded emergency rooms and full clinics. The new nonprofit Providence Everett Healthcare Clinic, at 1001 Broadway, joins two others in the county: Sea Mar in Marysville and the Community Health Center of Snohomish County, which has clinics in Everett and Lynnwood.
"There’s no question it won’t meet all the need," Roon said. "The point is … we’re going to plug this hole."
The effort to get the new clinic built began in spring 2002, when Drayton and Wiggins were in a welfare-to-work job class in Monroe.
As part of the state’s WorkFirst program, both were given Medicaid medical payment coupons, which were supposed to guarantee health care for themselves and their children.
But that wasn’t happening. Clinics were full or not taking new Medicaid patients.
The only way women in the WorkFirst class, as well as other Medicaid and uninsured patients, could get medical care was by going to hospital emergency rooms.
"We were just a group of mothers," Drayton recalled. "We had no idea each other was going through that." They started asking each others: Is this a problem for you?
They quickly realized that they all faced the same issue. "It was pointless to have a medical coupon," Drayton said.
Rather than simply getting angry, they started calling medical clinics and writing down what they were told when they asked for an appointment.
"True enough," Drayton said. "We couldn’t find one single doctor to accept us with a medical coupon."
They kept track of their troubles. They compiled a report, including the dates that class members called medical clinics, personal essays on their struggles to get medical and dental care and a selection of newspaper stories on the problems of providing health care to the uninsured.
They mailed it to local, state and federal officials, but got little response.
Then their story came to the attention of Roon, who is trauma director at Everett’s hospital and president of the Snohomish County Medical Society.
Roon promised to include their stories in talks he made on the health care crisis to local business and community groups.
"You never know what’s going to happen with the economy," he told the class. "We all need a safety net."
The WorkFirst women were trying to get medical care during what even doctors were calling a health care crisis in Snohomish County. There was a growing doctor shortage, hospital rooms swamped with patients who couldn’t get care in clinics, and doctors paid fees by the government that didn’t cover the cost of treating patients — not just for Medicaid patients but seniors on Medicare, too.
To economically survive, many clinics said they would continue to see existing Medicaid and Medicare patients, but would be forced to refuse to take on any more.
Those events helped make Providence Everett Medical Center’s emergency department the busiest in the state in 2002 — even busier than UW Medical Center.
Out of 92,748 patients treated that year at Everett’s emergency room, more than half (about 55 percent) were on tax-paid medical programs or uninsured. Of those, 29 percent (26,979 people) were on Medicaid. Another 11,060 patients (12 percent) were on Medicare. And 12,967 (14 percent) were uninsured.
The number of emergency department visits grew even more in 2003.
Final figures aren’t yet available, but the number of patients treated last year is expected to total about 96,700. The number of unemployed patients is expected to be about 16 percent of that, with increases projected in Medicaid and Medicare patients, too.
For nearly a year, it seemed like the women’s WorkFirst class project had gone nowhere. But Roon kept thinking about it; the women’s stories lingering in his mind.
Early last year, he met with then-County Executive Bob Drewel.
"Tony is one of those passionately relentless people when he’s on a mission," Drewel said.
In March, he and Drewel called a summit with local doctors and other health care workers on how to provide basic health care for those who didn’t have it.
They proposed a new, nonprofit medical clinic in north Everett. If $490,000 could be raised, it would get the clinic up and running and provide enough money to sustain its long-term operations, Roon said.
It was a big "if."
Snohomish County’s economy had been shattered by the Boeing layoffs. Unemployment hit 8.5 percent. Donations to even well-established charities had plunged.
Then two big donations primed the pump. Car dealer Dwayne Lane and wife Rosemary donated $100,000. The couple, friends of Roon, had been following the stories of people who couldn’t get regular health care.
"The emergency room is crammed," Rosemary Lane said. "We needed a place to serve people."
The North Everett Lions Club, with just 22 members, turned their profits from their four-day-a-week bingo games into a $150,000 donation.
"There are a lot of caring people out there who knew there were too many people falling through the cracks, who weren’t getting the care they needed," said Jack Wilson, club president.
Eventually, the list of contributors grew to 350 people and organizations. Clinic donations topped $1 million, enough to ensure its financial stability.
No longer a dream, preparations for the clinic transformed into a blizzard of time sapping details: writing business plans, remodeling, estimating the number of staff and how many patients would use it. The opening was set for January 2004.
In its first year, Providence Everett Healthcare Clinic expects to book 8,800 medical appointments. That could hit 19,000 annual appointments within four years, said Lisa Carroll, clinic manager.
Even with a $557,000 budget, the clinic expects to lose $115,000 this year, but hopes to break even in its second year, said Deanne Meling, who helped plan the clinic.
Its emphasis is basic health care, well baby checks, physicals and treatment of chronic conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes and asthma. Patients will be treated by a four-member staff of nurse practitioners and a physician assistant.
One room will be set aside for patient education, group question-and-answer sessions on common medical problems.
Students from the University of Washington and Everett Community College will get experience and college credits, for working at the clinic.
Elida Perrault, a 41-year-old EvCC student who is fluent in Spanish, is working on a medical assistant degree. She said she expects to be at the clinic for far more than the 200 hours required for her classes because "it’s a wonderful opportunity."
Ten days ago, while boxes were being unpacked and construction ladders stood stilt-legged in hallways, Roon invited Wiggins and Drayton for a private tour, the first time he had see them since spring 2002.
"Do you remember me? I’m Dr. Roon," he said as he shook their hands. "You pushed me to do this."
Drayton, who lives in Lake Stevens with her two children, A.J., 10, and Demico, 9, now has a sales job at the Everett Mall.
"I’m just so excited and happy," she said. "I’ll make an appointment the first day it opens for my two kids and myself."
Drayton hopes to volunteer at the clinic and would like to start taking classes at Everett Community College to become a medical assistant.
Wiggins now works at an Everett day care facility, where she has health insurance. Now remarried, she just had her third child, Jakob. Her youngest son Jace, whose eardrum ruptured while waiting to be treated at Everett’s emergency room, is 5. His brother James is 7.
"I can’t believe a change happened," Wiggins said, recalling the class project that seemed destined for little more than a recycling bin.
"Now I can tell people honestly: I know you’ll get good care."
Reporter Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486 or salyer@heraldnet.com.
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