No longer on life support

Published 1:43 pm Thursday, October 2, 2008

When Snoqualmie Valley Hospital Superintendent Jeff Lyle approached Overlake Hospital Medical Center administrators about them possibly offering his hospital some support services, they were surprised to see him.

“No one thought we would last,” Lyle said.

The administrators at Overlake, and others, had some reason to be surprised when they heard the hospital reopened on Dec. 31, 2000, the last day of the 20th century. Snoqualmie Valley Hospital has been beset with problems during the past decade and is now preparing for its third opening in 20 years.

Although the hospital has been around for quite some time, its administrators feel as if they are really just getting started.

Snoqualmie Valley Hospital was opened in 1983 and managed for 10 years by the St. Joseph’s Sisters of Peace, now known as Peace Health. It was the only hospital in the Valley, but Lyle said St. Joseph’s didn’t renew its lease for financial reasons.

The hospital opened again in 1994 with the help of an affiliation with Swedish Hospital. After three years, the hospital closed. Lyle said it was trying to fill a demand that was not there during its first 10 years of existence. Snoqualmie Valley Hospital offered too many expensive services, such as 24-hour emergency care and specialists, that were not being used.

“We were driving a Cadillac when we should have been driving a Chevy,” Snoqualmie Valley Hospital Commissioner Dick Jones said.

Lyle was brought on after the hospital closed to help get through the red tape and the myriad of billing problems that arose from a computer glitch. Uncertain if it could even afford Lyle, the hospital district hired him for only part-time work, but soon brought him on full time to see if he could work on getting the hospital running again.

“We got a lot of offers that seemed too good to be true, and they were,” Lyle said.

After a string of several deals that fell through at the 11th hour, or at “11:45” as Lyle put it, the hospital reached a joint administrative agreement with Overlake last year.

“In every decision we make from now on, we will have to break even or end up in the black in the long run,” Jones said. “We don’t rush into deals.”

Jones said Lyle has done everything from purchasing surplus equipment from the government, to paying for and making repairs on his own in order to save money. The first eight beds in the hospital were personally purchased by Lyle.

The new hospital is now slowly building back up, and one of the important steps has been the addition of its new senior behavioral health program, “Jeanne’s Place.”

Jeanne’s Place, named after former Snoqualmie mayor Jeanne Hansen, is a voluntary, in-patient mental health service for seniors. Its director, Lynn Allar, said the program has been needed on the Eastside since similar programs were only offered closer to Seattle.

Allar said Snoqualmie Valley Hospital has the perfect location for a senior mental health center. Its serene setting, coupled with easy access and ample parking, make the location a lot less stressful than urban clinics.

“They can just drive up and circle around the parking lot in their Buicks without worrying about everything,” Allar said.

She said the program also serves a different demographic group with different needs than a general mental health clinic. Seniors suffer from many of the same problems as others, such as grief and depression, but the root causes are different.

Seniors tend to deal with loss and displacement issues differently, since they start to see others around them die as they become less self-reliant. All of this can be hard on a person, said Allar, who is taking care of her own elderly mother, and seniors need a program specifically tailored to their needs.

“A 65-year-old and 25-year-old don’t have a lot in common,” she said.

Allar added she hopes the program will be a highlight on the list of services the hospital will offer. Lyle and Jones said they will eventually like to bring in more specialists, and even surgery to the hospital.

In its latest incarnation, Snoqualmie Valley Hospital is marketing itself to the Eastside as an alternative to the urban hospitals of Bellevue and Seattle. The new slogan is “Closer Than You Think.”

After almost 10 years of wondering if a hospital could survive in the Valley, Jones said the community is ready for a hospital it can embrace and call its own.

“We’re not a liability, we’re an asset,” he said.

You can reach Ben Cape at (425) 888-2311, or e-mail him at ben.cape@

valleyrecord.com.