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Community Corner

Sea Mar Community Health Centers Fills Void At Tillicum

Lakewood residents may see a two-week gap in medical appointments while the replacement health-clinic prepares to open for business at same location.

Seattle-based Sea Mar Community Health Centers — one of the largest clinic providers in Washington state — is expected to start seeing patients at the in Lakewood next month.

Sea Mar is replacing financially troubled Community Health Care, which plans to close its Lakewood clinic May 27.

While lease details were still being worked out with Sea Mar, the new provider's web site already lists Tillicum . Several attempts to get comments from Sea Mar officials were unsuccessful.

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Karen Priest, who runs the Tillicum community center at 14916 Washington Ave. SW, said patients probably will experience about a two-week gap without medical appointments while Community Health Care moves out and Sea Mar installs its equipment.

Priest, the community center’s executive director, said she expects the new health-clinic provider to be up and running by the middle of June.

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Community Health Care reportedly has been losing $150,000 a year at the Tillicum clinic and decided to close the smallest of its clinics as a result of state budget cuts.  Priest started looking for a replacement when she learned in January of CHC’s intent.

Without a new clinic operator, at least 300 Tillicum patients — representing some of the poorest residents of Pierce County — would be forced to travel to clinics elsewhere in the region for treatment.

According to the Tacoma Pierce County Health Department, about 100,000 people out of a population of nearly 741,000 do not have health insurance, while some 300,000 do not have dental insurance.

Community Health Care has provided primary medical and dental services for Lakewood patients and their families for years. Under its program, patients have received medical services on a sliding-fee scale. It is not yet known whether the rate structure will change under Sea Mar’s stewardship.

Priest said earlier that her governing board already has approved the new provider.   However, official word of the new partnership is expected to be made at a news conference in the next week or two.

“We are working out some different things and I need to wait for them (Sea Mar)," Priest said. "We’re going to let Sea Mar make the formal announcement. They’re the lead agency.”

The clinic system itself dates to 1969 when local physicians and citizens, recognizing the problems of access to health care for the county's low-income and uninsured residents, established two volunteer clinics.

Located in East Tacoma and the downtown Hilltop area, the first ones were operated one or two nights a week by volunteer physicians with the help of citizens handling logistics and paperwork.

In 1980 the federal Urban Health Initiative made funding available to the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department to take over the first two clinics and establish two more in Sumner and Lakewood. 

With passage of the federal Public Health Service Act in 1987, clinic operations moved under the leadership of a private, non-profit organization. Community Health Care Delivery System, a private, non-profit organization, was created and took over operation.

The name officially changed to Community Health Care in 1995.

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