EDMONDS — An Edmonds doctor who said he would quit if employees at his clinic weren’t given more affordable health insurance has done just that.
Dr. Keith Luther of Family Care of Edmonds announced that he will be leaving in the next several months, although a specific date hasn’t been set.
Exactly what that means for the clinic and its nearly 8,000 patients isn’t clear. The clinic is owned by Stevens Hospital.
On Thursday, the hospital released a statement saying that the clinic was merging with the Ballinger Clinic in Shoreline, but the date for that hadn’t been determined.
Ballinger was part of a network of clinics owned by Stevens Hospital until Jan. 1, when it became independent.
"What our understanding is, is that all the physicians agreed on the concept" of a merger, said Dr. John Todd, interim chief executive for the Edmonds hospital.
The agreement with Ballinger Clinic says the Edmonds clinic health care providers will be able to move to the clinic and "all their patients will be able to be transferred there, and there will be continuation of patient care," said Dr. Paul Taylor-Smith, executive director of Stevens Hospital.
However, Dr. Rocky Mazzeo, a Ballinger Clinic physician, said bringing the patients and staffs of the two clinics together "makes sense, but no, we don’t have an agreement that anything is going to occur."
"Right now, I’d say merging is sort of an overstatement of what’s going on," he added.
Luther said he will be joining the Ballinger Clinic. Now in Shoreline, it will move to a shopping center on 244th Place SW in Mountlake Terrace next week.
"In a sense, it’s a matter of semantics," Luther said Thursday of whether the clinics will actually merge.
The Ballinger Clinic has offered jobs to him, the clinic’s other physician, Dr. Steve Carter, and its physician assistant, Vivian DeValle, Luther said, although so far he’s the only one who has accepted.
The status of the clinic’s 13 other employees is still not determined, he said.
Luther said he thought Stevens Hospital made the merger announcement to try to reassure patients that they were not going to be abandoned, but also to "save some public face" in his dispute with the hospital over health care insurance for Family Care of Edmonds employees.
Todd said Luther has been talking about joining the Ballinger clinic for a year.
The clash began when health insurance rates for clinics owned by Stevens Hospital were announced in November. Although clinic and hospital employees receive free medical coverage, the cost of insuring spouses and children rose dramatically this year.
Health care premiums for coverage of a clinic employee’s child increased 329 percent, to $160 per paycheck. Hospital employees are paying $81.93 for the same coverage.
"I felt they were being treated unfairly," Luther said.
Hospital officials said they were responding to health care cost increases of 48 percent to 65 percent in the past two years.
Stevens Hospital’s 1,450 employees traditionally pay less than the 130 employees who work for the clinics owned by the hospital. The clinics are operated as a separate business unit.
Luther, who has no dependents, was not affected by the premium increases. In December, he said he would resign unless the hospital cut the costs of health care for employee families.
Reporter Sharon Salyer:
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