PORT ANGELES – Olympic Medical Center plans to protect its services in Sequim, even after a steep set of federal funding cuts have been re-established.
A court ruling this summer reinstated cuts from the Center for Medicare Services that will result in tens of millions of dollars in reduced funding for OMC. The CMS rule limits reimbursement of hospital levels to clinics only within 250 yards of the hospital. That means most of OMC’s services, including its Sequim campus will be ineligible for the hospital-level reimbursements.
But OMC CEO Darryl Wolfe says they are planning to keep services in Sequim, even with the cuts.
“We’re dedicated to our Sequim campus and the services that we have there. Many of you are well aware of our cancer center, which is a state-of-the-art cancer center, that will stay there. Moving that to Port Angeles would be very very difficult. So we’re dedicated to the Sequim campus. It’s like the direction that this cut drives us to is, ‘Yeah, have everything right here in Port Angeles’ which just isn’t practical.”
Wolfe says OMC prepared this year’s budget assuming the cuts would be in place. But will have to sharpen pencils moving ahead.
Again, we’ve been planning. We’ve been very conservative. Through our planning financially, we were hopeful. But we anticipated these cuts would stay in place, so we’ve continued that way.
An earlier court ruling had overturned the “site-neutral” rate proposals. But that was reversed by a higher court this summer. Wolfe says the only other court remedy would be to go to the US Supreme Court.