physician owned and directed - Wenatchee Valley Medical Center

Physician Owned and Directed
Wenatchee Valley Medical Center is directed by an elected board of practicing WVMC physicians, nominated by
fellow WVMC physicians.
Shared decision making and approachable leadership are an inherent part of our culture. Internal relationships
are fundamental to our success; therefore, formalities and bureaucratic politics are not a welcome part of our
corporation.
We recognize the ideas and suggestions of our physicians as a necessary element to WVMC’s growth and
improvement. We also equip our physicians with everything they need to provide superior patient care including
support staff, equipment and facilities.
Ultimately, our team of 180 physicians is united by a commitment to practicing excellence in medicine, providing
superior patient care, and pursuing exceptional internal relationships.
“There’s no politics, it’s just a big team that we all play for
— for the patient’s benefit.”
-Jay R. Gorham, M.D., F.A.C.C
Cardiology | Wenatchee Valley Medical Center
820 North Chelan Avenue
Wenatchee, WA 98807-0489
tel
fax
(509)663-8711
(509)664-3404
[email protected]
www.WVMedical.com
Form 38968 4/08
WVMC Facilities
Eight clinics – Wenatchee, East Wenatchee, Moses Lake, Omak, Tonasket, Cashmere,
Oroville and Royal City
Hospital with 6 operating rooms, 11 medical-surgical beds, 9 CARF-certified acute
rehab beds and Level IV ER
Three Medicare-certified Ambulatory Surgery Centers
Team of 180 primary and specialty care physicians, 65 mid-level practitioners
Over 30 medical and surgical specialties represented
High tech information systems including EMR, PACS, fiber-optic network
Phase I-IV Clinical Research Department, 6-bed sleep lab, full-service radiology and
laboratory
Clinical teaching site for University of Washington medical students and AMA-certified,
Level I graduate medical education provider
Network affiliate of the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research
Center, UW Medicine, and Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center)
820 North Chelan Avenue
Wenatchee, WA 98807-0489
tel
fax
(509)663-8711
(509)664-3404
[email protected]
www.WVMedical.com
Form 38969 8/08
mid-level practitioners
We provide excellent medical practices for certified physician assistants and registered nurse practitioners.
Within our physician owned and directed organization, mid-level practitioners are a well-respected addition to
our medical team.
Shared decision making and approachable leadership are an inherent part of our culture. Internal relationships
are fundamental to our success; therefore, formalities and bureaucratic politics are not characteristic of our
organization.
Ultimately, our entire staff is united by a commitment to practicing excellence in medicine, providing superior
patient care, and pursuing exceptional internal relationships.
“I really know the people I work with. I don’t see them as patients.
They’re neighbors, they’re friends... They’re a neighbor I haven’t met yet.”
-Sarah L. Kaiser, P.A.
Family Practice | North Valley Family Medicine
820 North Chelan Avenue
Wenatchee, WA 98807-0489
tel
fax
(509)663-8711
(509)664-3404
[email protected]
www.WVMedical.com
Form 38995 4/08
mid-level practitioner benefits
We offer a competitive compensation package including:
Market-responsive salaries
Health, dental, disability and life insurance
Malpractice coverage
Generous time-off – up to 29 days
Annual $2,000 CME allowance
Relocation allowance
Generous company contribution to retirement
820 North Chelan Avenue
Wenatchee, WA 98807-0489
tel
fax
(509)663-8711
(509)664-3404
[email protected]
www.WVMedical.com
Form 39003 4/08
Wenatchee valley clinic:
t h e h i s t o r y of a t h r i v i n g a n om a l y
By Jeanette Marantos
W
hen Wenatchee Valley Clinic opened
on April Fool’s Day, 1940, the local
medical community dismissed it as a
folly-a small brick building, just 50 by 60
feet, manned by three upstart doctors:
Albert Donald “Don” Haug, a Lahey
Clinic-trained surgeon who loved fast cars
and hated OB; Lloyd Smith, a vegetarian
and ardent Seventh-day Adventist whose
love for ham radios moved him from
general practice to the new specialty field
of radiology, and Lumir Martin “Mart”
Mares, the popular internist who brought
them together, a portly workaholic with
little talent for surgery but a genius at
diagnosis and patient relations.
“They said we’d last six months,”
said Dr. Smith, the surviving founder. But
Drs. Haug and Mares had a dream, long
nurtured, of creating a medical clinic in
the West that would rival any in the East.
“We knew it would grow,” Dr. Smith said,
“but none of us had any idea it would grow
to what it is now,” one of the largest and
most progressive multispecialty clinics in
the Northwest.
But Wenatchee Valley Clinic has
always been an anomaly. It became a
group of specialists when most doctors
worked alone as general practitioners,
and invested heavily in the latest
equipment and training.
Chelan there
Avenuewere three
820 North
Although
Wenatchee, WA 98807-0489
founders, it was Dr. Mares who brought
tel venture together.
(509)663-8711
the
He was an easy
fax
(509)664-3404
man to underestimate at first, earthy
and
rumpled, with small holes in his
[email protected]
jacket www.WVMedical.com
from cigarette burns. But behind
In those days, indeed, until the
late 1970s, Wenatchee’s hospitals had
no emergency-room doctors. So after
a full day of practice, Dr. Mares spent
many nights making emergency house
calls, surgeries or deliveries. He was a
strong believer in house calls, not just in
Wenatchee but as far north as Okanogan
Country, a good 80 miles away. In those
days, Dr. Mares charged $2 - about eight
dozen eggs - for an office visit and $3
for a house call. A herniotomy cost $25,
including the post-operative care, and an
obstetric case cost $35, the same as an
appendectomy.
By 1935, Dr. Mares was earning
enough to move his practice to a suite
of seven rooms across the hall. It was
Dr. Haug, Mary Murphy, and Dr. Mares.
around then that he met Dr. Smith, a
the country-bumpkin exterior, Dr. Mares
general practitioner in the wheat town
had a keen business sense, and he awed
of Mansfield, about 60 miles northeast
his colleagues with his tireless work ethic,
of Wenatchee, who also doubled as the
his endless supply of funny stories and his
assistant health officer for Douglas
gentle, charismatic way with patients.
County.
Dr. Mares was the first of the
Dr. Smith worked pretty much alone
founders to move to Wenatchee. He arrived
in those early days, a 25-year-old doctor
in December of 1928. He spent his last
responsible for a vast rural area. “I was
dollar on the train ticket from Chicago
practicing 60 miles from the nearest
to Wenatchee, and then had to hock his
hospital, and when I went to see my first
overcoat to have enough money for food.
patient, I was scared to death,” Dr. Smith
In October of 1931 Dr. Mares rented
two small rooms on the fifth floor of the
Doneen Building in downtown Wenatchee.
The practice was so popular that patients
would spill out of the tiny reception area and
into the hall, waiting for their turn with the
doctor.
W e n at c h e e
E a s t W e n at c h e e
C a s h m e re
Moses L ake
Omak
O rov i l l e
To n a s k e t
Roya l C i t y
said. “Those were the days before antibiotics,
10 months at the Presbyterian Medical Center in
pear orchard at what was then the end of
sulfa or anything and I used a lot of prayer, I’ll
New York studying radiation therapy.
Chelan Street, at Ninth. By 1970, the clinic had
tell you that.”
grown to 29 specialists—more than half of
All three became the first in North
Meanwhile, Dr. Mares was looking
Central Washington to become certified in their
Wenatchee’s physicians.
for a surgeon to join his growing practice. He
fields. Dr. Mares passed his boards in internal
found Don Haug, who had just completed his
medicine first, just before he was discharged
voluminous that an accountant recommended
three-year surgical residency at the Lahey Clinic
from the Army Air Corps as a lieutenant colonel,
using a computer. The results created a new
in Boston, one of the most prestigious clinics in
and reopened the clinic in the late summer of
set of embarrassing headaches, at least for
the country.
1946.
The
had
become
so
the first year. “Male patients were billed for
hysterectomies, women for prostatectomies,
and his wife arrived in
Smith said, the clinic only
and one patient received a bill that just said
Wenatchee on Christmas
accepted new partners
Large,” recalled internist and unofficial clinic
Day, 1937. Things got off
who were board certified
historian Robert Hoxsey, M.D. “In time this was
to a somewhat rocky start
or board eligible. Smith
slowly corrected, but it was a painful process.”
when Dr. Haug discovered
became a full partner,
that the clinic he thought
and the men decided
was a reality only existed
that henceforth, they
its regional base by building new facilities in
in
would stick with their
new
billings
From then on, Dr.
his
surgeon
The
partner’s
imagination.
specialties.
By early 1939,
Drs.
Haug
and
The decision also
Mares
meant the clinic had
asked Dr. Smith to join their
to begin adding new
clinic, but not as a general
doctors
immediately,
practitioner. They wanted a
because
Dr.
radiologist. Dr. Smith had
refused to deliver any
Haug
built himself an impressive amateur radio shack,
more babies. Dr. Mares recruited a respected
and Dr. Mares was convinced that anyone who
local obstetrician, Richard Mitchell, to become
could operate a ham radio could become a
the clinic’s fourth partner.
radiologist.
In early 1940, the doctors were
success, and by 1947, the building was running
making plans to build a new clinic. They chose
out of room, so the doctors decided to add
a vacant lot at Second and Mission streets, and
another 3,000 square feet, doubling the size. By
with money borrowed from one of Dr. Mares’
the time the work was completed in December, six
wealthy friends, built a 3,000-square-foot brick
new doctors had arrived, including Fred Radloff,
building. It still stands today, with substantial
M.D., the new internist.
remodeling.
Two years after they built and opened
“We were on call every day, all the time, because
the clinic, the three doctors closed its doors to
we didn’t have any emergency room doctors,”
enter World War II.
said Dr. Radloff. “We made house calls in the
morning, house calls in the evening and house
The war closed the clinic for four years,
The reopened clinic was again a
Everyone at the clinic worked hard.
but it also changed the course of medicine in
calls at night. It was hard work.”
the United States, and certainly Wenatchee,
because of the GI Bill, which made it possible for
extended family, working impossible hours and
doctors to leave the war and return to school to
coming together when they played, sharing
freshen up their skills. Dr. Haug, for instance,
820 North
Chelan
returned
to Boston
afterAvenue
the war for six months
Wenatchee, WA 98807-0489
of pathology study before earning his board
holiday celebrations, birthday parties and family
tel
(509)663-8711
certification
in surgery
in 1947. Dr. Smith spent
fax
(509)664-3404
northern limits of the city, this time to an old
Since 1980, the clinic has firmed
Omak and Moses Lake, and acquiring clinics in
Tonasket, Cashmere and Oroville. The entire
organization is now called Wenatchee Valley
Medical Center, although the individual clinics
are still known by their local names (Omak Clinic,
Moses Lake Clinic, North Valley Family Medicine,
Cashmere Medical Center, North Valley Family
Medicine--Oroville, and Royal City Clinic), with
the exception of Wenatchee Valley Clinic, which
is making the transition to Wenatchee Valley
Medical Center. The organization sees more
than 125,000 people a year.
“We’ve treated people from every
county in the state of Washington, every state in
the union and from 10 different countries,” said
Administrator Shaun Koos. About 170 doctors
are affiliated with the clinic today, making it one
of the largest private employers in the region
as well as the second largest clinic in the state.
The world of medicine has changed
dramatically since 1940, and Wenatchee
Valley Clinic has changed along with it, and
flourished.
The doctors became a kind of
barbecues.
In 1956 the clinic was moving to the
Dr. and Mrs. Lloyd Smith with nursing staff.
[email protected]
Wenatchee Valley Medical Center | 820 N. Chelan Avenue | Wenatchee, WA 98807-0489 | 509-663-8711
www.WVMedical.com
Form 38983 4/08