COMMENTARY: Neighborcare clinic is a dream come true

The opening of the Neighborcare Vashon Clinic is a dream come true for me, and I think will also be so for many on Vashon once they understand what it represents. I want to explain why I am so excited that we finally have our own community health center.

For 25 years, Vashon Island was able to run its own health center with a lot of support from Granny’s Attic. The financial challenge of running our own health center caught up with us in 2000 and we were forced to turn to a larger, outside entity to run our clinic. For the last 16 years, we have had the very large, hospital-centered Highline Medical Group and then CHI Franciscan Health run the Vashon clinic. The finances of these giant systems are complicated, with the primary care clinics serving as a pipeline into the expensive services provided by specialists in the hospital complex. Although I don’t believe that they were a great match with Vashon, we were served fairly well by Highline and Franciscan, until Franciscan bailed out with short notice.

With support from the state and county, generous donations from the Vashon community and an incredible effort by Neighborcare to minimize our healthcare access gap, we recently celebrated the opening of the Vashon Neighborcare clinic.

Neighborcare Health is an excellent health care partner for our island. They are a much smaller organization than Highline and Franciscan, yet big enough to offer cost efficiency. More importantly, they are a community-oriented, mission-driven, highly successful, true nonprofit organization. They are entirely focused on, and specialize in, primary care. They run a dozen community health clinics in the greater Seattle area. They are also a partially federally funded community health center so they are required to actively monitor and improve their quality of care. This also means that they get significant grants to support their budget, receive malpractice insurance from the federal government and receive a higher level of payment for patients with Medicaid and Medicare. This makes them a very cost-effective, high-quality and sustainable healthcare partner for our island.

I have worked in community health centers in our region for 25 years, including five years working in several of the Neighborcare Health clinics on the Seattle side. I have known the Neighborcare Medical Director and CFO for a long time. This is a very well-run organization with an authentic commitment to the communities it serves. Service is the spirit that drives them. This comes through in the quality of caring that permeates the high-quality medical care and entire patient experience with their very well-trained and carefully selected staff.

Please come to the new Neighborcare Vashon clinic for care, currently located on Sunrise Ridge in the Vashon Health Center building. They take almost all forms of insurance, including Medicare and Apple Health and have a generous sliding scale for uninsured and underinsured people.

The clinic is a great choice for all islanders. We need to support the clinic so it can thrive and so the momentum can build to manifest a new clinic building.

— Baruch Brad Roter, MD, is an islander, family physician and clinical associate professor at the University of Washington’s medical school.