How Kitsap's healthcare community is rising to the challenge

21 Jan 2025
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Joe Morrison for the Kitsap Sun
How Kitsap is Tackling Healthcare Challenges with Innovation and Investment
Healthcare is complicated, expensive, and Americans are unhappy. According to Gallup’s annual health and healthcare poll from November 2024, just 44 percent of US citizens rate US healthcare as excellent or good. That’s the lowest rating in the survey’s 21 years.
In Kitsap, we also face significant challenges in healthcare. It’s worth looking at what local providers and institutions are doing to improve things here: investing in our community, reaching more patients, training more professionals, and building additional facilities.
Expanding Healthcare Infrastructure in Kitsap
As Conor Wilson reported recently in the Kitsap Sun, our $540 million new hospital in Kitsap, St. Michael Medical Center, is growing. When this state-of-the-art facility opened in 2020, it effectively made Silverdale the center of healthcare delivery across both the Kitsap and Olympic peninsulas. An additional $120 million construction project is presently underway to build a tower and add 74 beds to the hospital, along with more than 65 new healthcare jobs. Plans are for it to open in December 2025.
In addition to the tower expansion, three new freestanding emergency rooms are in the works for the community. Virginia Mason Franciscan Health—owner and operator of St. Michael Medical Center—is building out two hybrid urgent care / emergency rooms in Kitsap: One in Bremerton (11,000 square feet) and one in Port Orchard (10,000 square feet). The goal of these locations is to improve access to emergency and urgent care, ensuring patients receive care in the most appropriate setting for their needs. A third freestanding ER is on the way, from a different, major healthcare provider in Puget Sound: Multicare is building a 12-room, 10,500 square-foot emergency room facility in East Bremerton along the growing Highway 303 corridor.
Bridging Gaps in Access for Underserved Patients
There are other healthcare providers in Kitsap, and one that has stepped up to serve the community in a big way over the past decade is Peninsula Community Health Services (“PCHS”). If you think they’re a small nonprofit, think again: This institution employs more than 400 and delivers healthcare services throughout Kitsap and Mason Counties.
“PCHS has grown tremendously in the last ten years to meet the growing demand for primary care in our community,” said Gustavo A. Cabral Pérez, PCHS Human Resources Director. “In 2014, we served 24,465 patients. Today, we serve over 43,500.” PCHS serves all kinds of patients—Medicare, Medicaid, the uninsured, and the traditionally insured.
“We know that access to primary care is an issue regardless of what insurance type you have,” said Cabral Pérez. “PCHS has been responsive to those needs. Ten years ago, PCHS's payer mix was 67% Medicaid, 11% Medicare, 13% commercial, and 8% Uninsured. Today, we serve around 44% Medicaid, 17% Medicare, 32% commercial, and 7% uninsured.”
Constantly innovating to be competitive and deliver service in the healthcare space, PCHS has developed its own employee housing for recruitment and retention purposes. In the last 12 months, they’ve trained 47 people as Dental or Medical Assistants, preparing them for certifications. In November 2024 they won the Innovating Justice Award from the Board of Judicial Administration for their Clifton Clinic. The facility, which opened last year, offers healthcare to individuals post-incarceration, and includes in its offerings targeted ways to help mitigate opioid addictions.
Tackling Workforce Shortages
One of the healthcare challenges we face in Kitsap—perhaps our number one challenge—is having enough trained healthcare workers here to deliver service. For the last few months, the number one job posting in Kitsap was the same. There were 333 postings for Registered Nurses in October and 248 in November, more than double the amount of the next position sought. According to data from the Employment Security Department, health care roles are well-represented in the top 20 posted positions in Kitsap: For Home Health and Personal Care Aids (88 postings), Medical and Health Services Managers (48 postings), and Medical and Nursing Assistants (45 postings each).
Taking action to address this workforce need is Kitsap’s flagship higher educational institution, Olympic College. OC is revamping their Poulsbo building to exclusively focus on healthcare. They’re also proposing a second building on that campus, also exclusively dedicated to healthcare.
“Phase 1” of the Olympic College Poulsbo Healthcare Campus is a $10.5 million renovation of the existing building. It’s funded by Kitsap County through American Rescue Plan Act dollars, Virginia Mason Franciscan Health and the Olympic College Foundation. Once complete, OC Poulsbo will house phlebotomy, radiology technology, sonography, and surgical technology training programs. The potential second healthcare building on the campus, “Phase 2,” will cost more than $70 million and will train up to another 100 students a year in dental hygiene, dental assistant, paramedic, EMT and respiratory technology programs. In addition to helping fund the first phase, Virginia Mason Franciscan Health is supporting Olympic College workforce development programs to build a future diverse pipeline of students interested in a health care career.
It’s sorely needed. No part of healthcare has been exempt from challenges related to staffing. “After COVID when it comes to workforce, we were hit as hard or harder than other parts of healthcare,” said Dave Damon, CEO of Kitsap Physical Therapy.
To address this, Kitsap Physical Therapy took a different approach to recruitment, which was to increase its role as a teaching facility. They brought in more Doctor of Physical Therapy students for clinical rotations.
“In 2023 we had six students come through,” said Damon, pointing out that they were able to hire three of them. “In 2024, we had 17 or 18 students come through, and many have contributed to the 14 new therapist hires we made this year.”
Damon also points out that when it comes to future workforce, strong local relationships with Kitsap schools can help. Kitsap Physical Therapy offers the Mike Danford Student to Work scholarship, which is spread out over a couple of years and forgivable if students come back and work at Kitsap Physical Therapy for three years. “Turns out, most of them want to come back and work for us,” said Damon. “More than a few do this, and some eventually become partners in our practice.”
Rising to the Challenge
Kitsap’s healthcare challenges are significant and shouldn’t be minimized. In July 2024, the Kitsap Public Health District Board declared a public health crisis due to “high costs and insufficient access of healthcare.” A related Johns Hopkins 2024 report found that “Individuals living in Kitsap County…experience significant barriers when seeking healthcare, including prohibitive costs, lengthy delays to see primary care providers, inadequate insurance coverage, and reductions in levels of services in high need subspecialty care.” The report also points out that Kitsap falls “below the state average for primary care providers, physician assistants, obstetrical-gynecological physicians (OB/GYNs), mental healthcare providers, dentists, and staffed inpatient hospital beds per 100,000 population.”
Local healthcare providers and institutions are taking notice of these challenges and gaps. They’re working on them: Making investments, innovating, doing what they can to increase capacity and improve outcomes. The new facilities being built, new jobs on the way, and increased healthcare capacity in the community is something that will benefit us all—residents, workers, and employers.
Joe Morrison is Executive Director of the Kitsap Economic Development Alliance. Email him at morrison@kitsapeda.org
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