Patients express frustration at docs' terminations

MOSES LAKE - Twelve people attended Samaritan Healthcare's recent board meeting to express their frustration over three doctors being terminated.

Cole Hemmerling, Andrea Carter and Tiffany Friesen were terminated from Samaritan Clinic on June 14.

Samaritan President Katherine Christian said that the board was bound not to divulge the details of personnel issues.

"If I were sitting in your chair I would probably be very surprised as well," she said. "I understand that. I'm a health care consumer as well. But while the events of this last week appear sudden to your perspective, I know these conversations actually have been going on within the whole hospital for over two years and with the doctors themselves for over a year. It's not sudden."

Christian said that due to health care reform and the downturn in the economy, the hospital has struggled with finances and as a result, every department has been required to adjust.

The hospital consulted four independent organizations to "make sure that our expectations were reasonable both for the providers and for us as an organization," she said. "We reached an impasse. After over a year of trying to find a solution that worked for everybody, we reached an impasse."

"Patients are caught in the middle and we all understand that," said Bair. "There's people wondering what's going to happen with their care. What we don't want to get into is finger pointing and mudslinging with providers that may stay within the community. This isn't about whether or not these are good docs or anything like that, but I know two of them that plan on staying and there's no good in getting into my reason and then having them rebut that and back and forth."

The records of the three doctors' patients will stay with the clinic unless they request to have them transferred, Bair said.

Psychiatric nurse practitioner and owner of Basin Psychiatry Peter Gourley disagreed with the way the doctors were terminated.

"The hospital could have retained these physicians for four months to allow a transition period instead of calling them in one night and saying, 'Don't show up to work the next day,'" Gourley said.

During his comments, Gourley claims the doctors were to be required to see a patient every eight minutes. He voiced concern about the ethics and effectiveness if such a requirement was made.

"I don't think it was fair to require that and I don't think that this is going to save the hospital any money in the long run," he added.

The allegation that Samaritan is going to require doctors to see patients every eight minutes is inaccurate, Christian said in an interview.

"I have no idea where that came from," she said. "The goal of the hospital is to establish a sustainable model for reasonable workload with reasonable compensation and I do not know where eight minutes a visit came from."

The studies Samaritan commissioned helped determine what a reasonable number of patients for doctors to see is, she said.

"The studies guide us in what constitutes reasonable both on workload and compensation," she said.

Anna Unruh said Dr. Friesen was the doctor of 15 of her family members and like a "part of our family."

"I know all three of the doctors and they're wonderful members of the community," she said.

She said she'd like to continue to see Dr. Friesen in the future if she can.

"If I can drive to see her, I'll go there, because I've never trusted a doctor like I do her," she said. "She's amazing."

"We would've liked to have had a different outcome," said Christian. "I think I speak for the board in that. I believe we did exhaust all of the options that we had. ... For the disruption, we are truly sorry."