The new facility will be owned and operated by PeaceHealth, a regional health system that serves communities in Washington, Oregon and Alaska.
PeaceHealth and the San Juan County Public Hospital District number 1 (Hospital District) in March 2009 approved a long-term agreement to significantly expand on-island healthcare services for Hospital District residents and Island visitors. The 50-year contract calls for PeaceHealth to build a new, fully integrated medical center located in Friday Harbor, including a new, expanded primary care and specialty clinic, expanded diagnostic services center, a 24-hour emergency room, and a 10-bed Critical Access Hospital.
The Certificate of Need (CoN) approval allows PeaceHealth and the San Juan Island community to now begin the design planning for the new facility. PeaceHealth signed a purchase and sale agreement for a 22-acre parcel of land for the hospital in July 2009.
PeaceHealth has already been working collaboratively with the San Juan Island community. A newly renovated mammogram imaging facility, retrofitted to provide the Island’s first digital mammography, was installed in August 2009 at the Inter Island Medical Center (IIMC) in Friday Harbor. The mammography facilities are operated by Mount Baker Imaging (MBI), a joint venture of PeaceHealth St. Joseph Hospital and Northwest Radiologists (NWR), both of Bellingham.
Under the terms of the approved contract signed in March 2009, local philanthropy will contribute $10 million toward capital costs for the new medical center and hospital. PeaceHealth will fund the remaining $20 million, own the property and new facility, and will have full responsibility for the delivery of ongoing patient care, staffing and operations when it opens in the year 2012. The Hospital District will not be providing any capital to build the new facility. As a result, no additional Hospital District tax levies will be required to fund the capital costs of the project.
The new Integrated Medical Center will increase the number of physicians serving the Hospital District’s residents and will nearly double the number of other on-island healthcare professionals serving the Island community. The Critical Access Hospital component of the project required, and has now received, Certificate of Need approval.
The State’s Certificate of Need program is a regulatory process that requires certain health care providers to obtain state approval before building certain types of facilities or offering new or expanded services. The CoN process is intended to help ensure that certain facilities and new services proposed by health care providers are needed, appropriately sized, and enjoy the support of their community.
