SULTAN – Las Vegas might not have liked the odds, but this town did.
On a Friday afternoon in February 2003, more than 250 people encircled the only medical clinic in the Skykomish Valley east of Monroe for a “line in the dirt” rally.
They came to protest plans to close the clinic. Losses had hit an estimated $155,000 the previous year, and shutting down was the only option for Everett-based Medalia Medical Group.
Residents were distraught. The next nearest medical facility was seven miles away in Monroe. So they clambered onto a pickup truck tailgate to tell people that clinic doctors were too valuable for the community to lose. They lived in the community. They were friends and neighbors. And they even made house calls to make sure elderly patients were doing well.
“There’s going to be a miracle in six weeks,” predicted Carolyn Eslick, a longtime business owner and valley resident. “We’re prime. We’re ready for it.”
Sure enough, the rural clinic was saved, thanks to the community’s fund-raising and assistance from Valley General Hospital in Monroe.
On Friday, doctors and employees are inviting the community to gather outside the clinic once again. This time, they will celebrate the official launch of Sultan Family Medicine as a private clinic, 18 months after it was scheduled to close.
During those 18 months, the clinic has had 16,000 appointments, and likely prevented a flood of Skykomish Valley patients from surging into Valley General’s emergency room.
The community has “a great relationship with those doctors, who are devoted to the community,” said Lorna Stone, senior officer for the Washington Health Foundation. The group provided a $15,000 grant to help the clinic plan its future.
“That provided the basis for this extraordinary support effort that resulted in them staying.
“If the clinic had closed, well heavens, you saw the result,” Stone said. “They all pitched in and made it happen.”
Community chipped in
Twenty donation boxes were dropped off at businesses in the Skykomish Valley as part of the community fund drive to save the clinic. About $62,000 was raised through this and other efforts.
“Those boxes, still out in the community, helped us focus on what we had to do,” said Dr. Mark Raney, one of the clinic’s three physicians. “I see people on a food-bank budget putting money in there.”
The money will likely be used to help the clinic buy software to computerize patient files, he said.
Key support came from taxpayer-supported Valley General. It temporarily took over, giving physicians time to chart the clinic’s future. Valley General invested about $200,000 in the clinic, chief executive Mark Judy said.
“It’s the only clinic between Monroe and Leavenworth,” he said. “It meets a vital need for a large segment of the Highway 2 population in Snohomish and King counties.
“It does feel good to have that clinic still open in that community. It was well worth the effort.”
One of the patients who knows firsthand of the clinic’s special care is 92-year-old Frank Wallace.
Raney and medical clinic assistant Karen Clark made regular house calls to check on Wallace last year. They spotted pounds vanishing from their patient’s tall frame, the toll of losing his wife of 58 years and a hip fracture. His weight had dropped from 176 to 140 pounds.
In July, when Wallace didn’t show up for an appointment, Clark called his home to find out why. Wallace told her he was having trouble getting out of his house. He had just been discharged from the hospital with fever and low blood pressure, and was due at the clinic for a follow-up appointment.
Clark called 911 and arranged to have Wallace transported and checked out at Valley General.
Looking healthy and robust on Wednesday, Wallace said of Clark, “Boy, I’ll tell you, if it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be sitting here.”
Initially, physicians thought they might operate the clinic as a nonprofit. Worried about the extra paperwork that would create, they decided instead to operate it as a private clinic.
Paring down the operations to run on a budget that will keep it in the black has meant major changes. The X-ray and laboratory operations were closed. A nurse’s position was cut. Remaining staff, including doctors, took on extra duties.
Clinic staff smaller
When the clinic was taken over by the hospital, it had a staff of 21 full- and part-time employees. Since then, the number of employees has been cut to 13. One of the clinic’s doctors, Sherman Lee, left Sept. 1 to join another clinic.
The three doctors now working at the clinic – Raney, Vickie Baker-Hall and Scott Weber – are putting their families’ futures on the line, said Merlin Halverson, chief of Fire District 5, which encompasses 71 square miles between Gold Bar and Monroe.
“I hope people have a full appreciation for their willingness to do that,” Halverson said. “It’s a tremendous risk for them.
“They have an opportunity to survive. Whether they’re successful remains to be seen.”
During June, July and August, the most recent financial quarter, the clinic was “just barely breaking even,” Judy said, making $3,764.
Raney said he sometimes thinks the stakes are “terrifying.”
“Nobody’s been able to do this for more than 10 years in this county – start a new, independent, primary care clinic,” he said.
Friday’s community event is to celebrate what has been a huge community effort and to thank all the people who put themselves on the line, Raney said.
“It’s a small-town celebration,” he said. “I’m looking for the feel of it to be like that last scene in ‘The Music Man.’”
Reporter Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486 or salyer@ heraldnet.com.
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