The following editorial originally appeared in the Yakima Herald-Republic:
The Washington State Hospital Association reports that just 12 of 81 hospitals across the state are running positive operating margins.
Meantime, local health care professionals and their families gathered the evening of Oct. 10 outside MulitCare Yakima Memorial Hospital, seeking a stronger union contract and more money.
Both ends of the equation — hospital administrations and employees — clearly have valid concerns. But maybe somebody should hold a vigil for Yakima Valley patients, who are caught in the middle here.
We understand that it takes years of expensive training to become a doctor, a nurse or any kind of health care specialist. And yes, recruiting nurses and doctors is a nationwide crisis, stemming from the darkest days of COVID.
Overworked staffs have been burning out and leaving the medical field in alarming numbers. No arguments there.
But realistically, how does a hospital system that lost $1.2 billion in the first half of 2022 and another $750 million in the first half of this year pay for raises?
Our concern is that it will be by further cutting services to patients.
While Yakima County’s population continues to grow — up by about 5.5 percent between 2010 and 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau — the availability of local medical services has shrunk.
The January 2020 closure of Astria Regional Medical Center didn’t help, and COVID’s toll on hospital staffs made things even worse.
Shorthanded hospitals have had little choice but to pay overtime for staffers working extra shifts and bring in expensive temporary workers to fill in blanks on the schedule, straining budgets even more.
The Legislature’s decision last session to raise Medicaid reimbursement rates has helped, but hospitals say they’re still struggling.
The worse it gets for hospitals, the worse it gets for the rest of us. Access to local medical care has taken hit after hit; procedures that were once available here are now outsourced to out-of-area medical centers, risking patients’ health and costing families more money and untold stress.
Look, nobody in health care works for cheap, particularly executives and star doctors. Nor should they be expected to — when your life is on the line, you want to be in competent hands, and those hands will likely go to the highest bidder.
At the same time, though, executive compensation packages are in the half-million-a-year range at Memorial, according to the state Department of Health, and physician salaries apparently aren’t far behind. Maybe some communities simply can’t afford to pay the same salaries as they’re making at the hospital up the road.
We urge legislators, local elected officials and industry leaders to work harder on making health care more affordable and more accessible.
