PeaceHealth, United General delay start date

SEDRO-WOOLLEY — PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center and United General Hospital have postponed the start of their operating agreement, citing a need for more time to prepare and delays in the state’s regulatory process.

PeaceHealth will now start operating United General no later than July 1, 2014 — not on July 1, 2013, as originally planned.

Fully integrating operations of the two hospitals is going to take longer than anticipated, leadership of the two hospitals announced in a joint press release Thursday. The two do not have a final operating agreement, said United General spokeswoman Valerie Stafford.

“(The change is) basically a good thing for us, because it’s going to give us a little breathing room to do this right,” Stafford said.

The other reason cited in the release is “regulatory approval procedural delays at the state level,” referring to the approval process required through the state Department of Health’s Certificate of Need program.

The state’s approval is required before a hospital can be leased or built, add more licensed beds or offer certain new services. The idea is to make sure these changes are necessary for quality patient care in a region, based in part on how much a population has used a hospital in the past and is projected to use it in the future.

The state pushed back the timeline for its approval process last month because PeaceHealth had not submitted a copy of the operating agreement. PeaceHealth has since submitted a draft.

The state’s decision is due May 6, less than two months before PeaceHealth was set to begin operating United General. That just wasn’t enough time to get everything done, Stafford said.

“We’re really trying to do it with a lot of care,” she said. “I mean, we really need to do this very carefully, so we really want to take our time and get it right, and we think this is the best way to do it.”

PeaceHealth and United General currently work together under an “interim services agreement,” which means United General already works alongside PeaceHealth employees in various capacities. United also fills open management positions with PeaceHealth employees when possible.

The interim agreement will continue, and is set to “expand” on July 1 of this year, according to the release. That expansion could mean PeaceHealth supplies United General with more resources, services and possibly more employees, Stafford said.

— Reporter Gina Cole: 360-416-2148, gcole@skagitpublishing.com, Twitter: @Gina_SVH, facebook.com/byGinaCole