To the editor:
This is a letter directed to Samaritan Health Services executive management.
I have been a dual Medicaid/Medicare member of Samaritan Health for five years. During that time, I felt I was getting the best care, both from a management and a healthcare provider perspective.
Now, not so much.
I am also a member of the InterCommunity Health Network/Coordinated Care Organization’s advisory council, a member of the Governor’s Commission on Senior Services, and a policy committee member for the Oregon Gerontological Association. I also sit on the Advancing the Consumer Experience subcommittee of the OHA Medicaid Advisory Council.
I just returned from a walk-in appointment at the Samaritan Health Clinic in Lincoln City. These meetings have generally been very positive in the past. I have previously felt Samaritan had the best work environment for employees to succeed at their job and to provide exemplary healthcare to our community.
Not anymore.
Employees are leaving en masse. I discovered that half a dozen great people at the clinic are gone or leaving. Forever.
Moreover, my primary doctor has effectively abandoned me recently, I think from early career burnout due to the working conditions now apparent everywhere in Samaritan Health. She’s a wonderful new doctor who chose Lincoln City, bought a house, and made a big commitment to Samaritan. Now she’s considering other opportunities.
Why? Because Samaritan management is now proactively crashing healthcare for IHN-CCO and Samaritan Health. My doctor has not followed through on the medicine promised to me two weeks ago, despite my repeated email reminders. She has too many patients. All her medical assistants have quit or left the building. How is a doctor to survive, let alone treat patients? Or take care of their own mental health?
How do we keep the promise of quality and available healthcare in our Coordinated Care Organization?
You are now putting all the patient’s health at risk as well. How long can we continue to suffer the thinning of the ranks of the frontline people who provide the real care in the system? Once patient delivery has been suffocated, what will we do to resuscitate?
What are we doing to sue for our contractual right to these payments? Why is Samaritan putting a happy face on the situation when the providers we see every day are quitting proactively? These are the questions patients like me ask every day when doctors ghost us and the best people leave voluntarily.
It’s not a good sign.
Some would say the federal government’s practices have led to this situation. But one could argue that management issues could also be key to the failure of the system. We have to rely on reimbursements for much of the revenue, but that’s been a long-term known issue. At the same time, you argue, most payments are about half the retail price. But hasn’t this been the case for decades? What is the real price anyway? So why are we now blaming this on the federal government? We still have to make this work. Or pass the reins to new management.
Perhaps looking at overall patient health should be a bigger consideration when creating chaos in the environment where we get our health care. Or did. The patients pay the price, not you.
Frontline providers are more important than corporate program and operations/oversight managers. directors and vice presidents. I encourage executive management to please stop the provider exodus. Bring back the great work environment of the recent past and take care of members effectively once again.
Manage for the long term. Dig deep. Keep frontline providers. Always think “members first.” Please.
— Steve Fritz/Lincoln City
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