Hospital gets set to open next year
Published 2:24 pm Thursday, October 2, 2008
SNOQUALMIE — Think of it as a Christmas present for the entire
Valley.
More than two years after it closed, crews are busy preparing
the Snoqualmie Valley Hospital to reopen after the first of the year.
Equipment and supplies arrive with each new day, and hospital officials have
begun searching for personnel to fill open positions.
In November, Jeff Lyle, superintendent of King County Hospital
District 4, announced that the hospital had signed a contract with
Snoqualmie Regional Hospital Inc. to reopen the facility. Snoqualmie Regional
Hospital is a non-profit organization created by Bainbridge Island-based
Northwest Care Management Inc., which runs several assisted-living
and Alzheimer’s communities.
Last week, inspectors with the state Department of Health
visited Snoqualmie Valley Hospital, and they are expected to decide whether to
renew the hospital’s license in the next few days. The inspectors spent
about eight hours going through the hospital on Dec. 20.
If the license is renewed, Lyle expects the hospital to open
sometime in February or March after staff has been hired. This time, he hopes
the hospital will stay open for good. Since the formation of the hospital
district nearly two decades ago, the facility has been forced to close its doors
twice — once in 1993, and again in 1997.
“We feel that the time is right, and if we start out small and grow with
the community, we have a real good shot of having this be the last time the
hospital opens,” he said.
If local population growth is any indication, the hospital should have
a bright future. King County Hospital District 4 — which covers 426
square miles and runs from Snoqualmie Pass to High Point, near Issaquah, and
the northern city limits of Carnation to Tiger Summit — has had its
population grow almost threefold since the mid-1980s.
Lyle said that in 1985, there were 18,000 people living in the district.
In 1995, that number blossomed to 36,000. Four years later, the
district’s population stands at 50,000.
Valley residents needing hospital services currently must drive
to Overlake Hospital Medical Center in Bellevue or Evergreen Hospital
Medical Center in Kirkland. Lyle knows Snoqualmie Valley Hospital
can’t compete with the services offered by the larger, urban medical centers,
but he thinks establishing a niche program in Snoqualmie “would allow us to
pay the rent.”
To that end, the hospital has signed a contract with SunStone to create
an eight-bed elder-care unit. The unit will provide medical and psychiatric
services for the elderly, but it will strictly be diagnostic. The unit will not
provide treatment, Lyle said.
As the surrounding population grows older, Lyle said it should
give the hospital a steady patient base.
“There’s a growing demand for that kind of service, and we think
we have a stable census in that area,” he said.
The elder-care unit is separate from the more traditional medical
services that will be offered at the hospital.
“We tried to make it look a little less like a hospital,” Lyle said of
the unit’s rooms. Crews knocked out a wall between two former
patient rooms and made it into a large open area with a television and space
for activities. There is an adjoining nutrition area, where elderly patients
can grab a snack, and staff will have quick access to any prescriptions the
patients need.
To start with, the hospital will have four acute-care patient beds, with
the ability to increase the number to six. Lyle said that at first, the hospital
will not provide surgery and delivery services, but they may be phased in
over the next six to eight months. Laboratory and limited radiology
services will be offered, and the hospital will look to add physical-therapy and
respite-care services over time.
“Basically, [we want to have] all the programs the hospital had
before, but it’s going to take awhile,” Lyle said.
To do that, the hospital needs personnel, and officials will spend
the next few weeks going over applications.
“We have seven or eight more positions that we’d like to have
filled,” Lyle said.
More changes are expected during the next year. Lyle said the
hospital district would likely manage the facility for the first year, but then
the non-profit Snoqualmie Regional Hospital organization would take
over management of the hospital in 2002, with the district acting as landlord.
Northwest Care also has plans to turn the site surrounding the
hospital into a medical campus by adding an assisted-living center and
building more medical offices.
