The Wahkiakum County Eagle - Established as The Skamokawa Eagle in 1891

The saga of the Wahkiakum’s Family Practice Clinic is over.

The ‘i’-s have all been dotted and the ‘t’-s all crossed. As of January 4, Longview-based Family Health Center (FHC) will be the new owner/manager of the Family Practice Clinic in Cathlamet.

“What this means for the clinic is we don’t lock the doors,” said Crystal Stanley.

Stanley is the Wahkiakum clinic business manager. She believes the clinic’s new ownership will bring much needed stability to the health clinic.

It also means the Wahkiakum Family Health Center qualifies for federal funding. The federal dollars should place the clinic on sound financial footing and ensure a stable health care system for the county.

The clinic will continue to see patients as before and service will be much the same, but there will be some changes.

“It will be a bit different from what it used to be,” said Stanley. “Gone is the day when we had a doctor on call 24-hours a day and if you’d blink he’d come out in the middle of the night.”

The newly reorganized clinic will maintain regular business hours Monday-Friday and continue to provide a range of primary care services including check ups, treatment for sickness, immunizations, family planning and prescription assistance. The clinic will also continue to provide some chronic pain management and basic emergency services.

Longview-based FHC Executive Director Dian Cooper said her organization began interviewing new doctors last week to staff the clinic. It’s expected the transition to FHC management will move slowly while they look for a new doctor to staff the clinic.

“As of today we’ve hired Brian McCoy as the clinic’s new physician's assistant,” Cooper said in an interview this past week, “and we are currently interviewing a doctor who is interested in the position at the clinic.”

In addition, Cooper said FHC has hired Julie Ney as the health center’s office manager.

“We think we have solid staff in place and we are working through all the details,” said Cooper.

The clinic’s current patient load will remain the same and few, if any patients, will notice any change to their healthcare services. Stanley also said that FHC will retain several of the Wahkiakum clinic’s current staff.

Most of the staff will remain at the clinic and billing will be the same.

For those with little or no insurance, “We will offer a sliding-fee schedule,” said Cooper, “which will be based on affordability and determined by the number of family members and income level.”

Wahkiakum County Commissioner Lisa Marsyla is heading the transition team. They plan to hand over the clinic to FHC in January. The county assumed control of the clinic from PeaceHealth in 2005, hoping to sell the facility. Since then it has spent several million subsidizing the clinic while searching for a buyer.

The county commissioners' strategy in shifting control of the clinic to FHC assured that the county would still have a health clinic. With its federal standing, FHC said they can qualify the clinic to serve everyone and target low-income, uninsured patients, as well as those on Medicaid or Medicare.