Clinic’s new CEO sees opportunities to help growing community

Mantei grew up in the small northern Michigan town of Cheboygan. He got his bachelor’s degree in accounting and master’s degree in health care administration from the University of Michigan.

After completing his education, Mantei worked as an administrator at an inner city Detroit hospital for five years. He was in charge of the emergency department, where it wasn’t unusual to see three gunshot wound victims per day.

“It was a fascinating experience,” Mantei said.

While in Detroit, Mantei met and married his wife, Paula, who was pursuing her nursing degree. Paula is from the Pacific Northwest, and together they visited the area several times during the summer months. In 1989, Mantei accepted the chief operating officer position at The Everett Clinic and the couple moved to the Northwest.

When Mantei took the job, The Everett Clinic had 50 physicians. Mantei thought he would only stay in the position for three years. Instead, he spent 26 years helping the clinic to grow to nearly 500 providers.

“The Pacific Northwest has these great multispecialty practices,” Mantei said. “I really bought into that and wanted to spend my career doing that.”

After nearly three decades in Everett, Mantei felt he was ready to take the next step and become a chief executive officer. He saw an opportunity to make that move at The Vancouver Clinic.

“Great things are happening here,” he said. “There’s a lot of room for growth.”

The Vancouver Clinic was established in 1936 and currently operates six clinics in Vancouver, Battle Ground and Washougal. The clinics have 260 medical providers and offer 42 services. In the last year, the clinic has cared for more than 150,000 patients.

While the mission of the organization — to provide quality, patient-centered health care — hasn’t changed with Mantei’s arrival, he does bring his own approach for making that vision a reality.

“We’re going to be a lot more involved in attracting patients,” Mantei said.

That includes being more present and involved in the community and finding out the needs — such as which communities are growing and where more providers are needed — and how The Vancouver Clinic can meet those needs, Mantei said.

“We want to have people feel good about getting all of their care in Clark County and not have to go to Portland,” he said.

The Vancouver Clinic also is placing more emphasis on prevention and wellness — keeping patients well, rather than responding to illness. Expanding behavioral health services is also a priority, Mantei said. Making those services available at the same place at primary care services will improve access, he said.

In addition, the clinic is launching a new palliative care program this summer and is working to implement a telehealth program that will allow patients to have video visits with their physicians, Mantei said.

“Health care is just changing dramatically,” Mantei said. “We have to find a way to lower overall costs.”

About a year ago, The Vancouver Clinic announced it was scaling back its Medicaid patient population because of growing client numbers and declining reimbursement rates. Clinic officials said the organization’s financial stability was at risk.

At the time, the clinic had about 36,000 primary care Medicaid clients; it now has about 20,000.

“Our confidence in our sustainability improved significantly,” Mantei said. “That said, we still have to work hard on reducing overall costs.”

Moving forward, Mantei’s and the clinic’s goal is to invest in needed infrastructure in order to improve population health.

“This is a growing community,” he said, “and The Vancouver Clinic wants to be at the center of that and making sure we have a healthy community.”