Lacey to get clinic for low-income patients

By Adam Wilson | The Olympian • Published August 09, 2008

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A new health clinic that accepts people without insurance is scheduled to open in Lacey this year.

Other South Sound walk-in clinics

Sea Mar Olympia Medical Clinic

•8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays except Thursdays, when hours are 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.

•Address: 3030 Limited Lane N.W., Olympia

•Phone: 360-704-2900

Urgent Care South

•Hours: 4:30 to 9:30 p.m. daily

•Phone: 360-943-3633

•Address: 6981 Littlerock Road, Suite 101, S.W., Tumwater

Westcare Clinic

•Hours: 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. weekdays; 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekends

•Phone: 360-357-9392

•Address: 3000 Limited Lane N.W., Olympia

Pacific Walk-In Clinic

•Hours: 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. weekdays; 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekends

•Phone: 360-455-1350

•Address: 3928 Pacific Ave S.E., Lacey

Urgent Care of Olympia

•Hours: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays

•Phone: 360-923-5565

•Address: 3700 Martin Way E., Suite 108, Olympia

Express Urgent Care

•Hours: 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. weekdays; weekends by appointment

•Phone: 360-923-1111

•Address: 130 Marvin Road S.E., Suite 112, Lacey

High demand for affordable medicine in Thurston County prompted the need for the new facility, said Laura Splawn, manager of the Sea Mar Community Health Center in Olympia. The Lacey clinic will be the second in Thurston County for Sea Mar, a Seattle-based network of 14 clinics.

The Olympia clinic had 37,000 visitors last year, nearly two-thirds of them in poverty, Splawn said.

The clinics provide access to doctors, mental health treatment and dental care, often in the same building. They rely on government-sponsored coverage and grants for most of their funding, charging those with no coverage $20 for an office visit.

"In Thurston County, it's a large population, and we are the only community health clinic," said Shanon Hardie, vice president of the network's operations.

Sea Mar was founded to serve Hispanics in Seattle, but its Olympia office serves mostly low-income whites with government insurance plans. The organization reports 47 percent of its patients are white, but locally, the figure is 69 percent. Thurston County's percentage of whites is higher than King County's.

Medicaid

Medicaid, the taxpayer-paid health insurance program for low-income people, covers 43 percent of all Sea Mar patients. But 55 percent of the Olympia clinic's patients use it, according to the clinic.

"Here there is a ton of Medicaid people, but nobody will see them," Hardie said.

Finding doctors willing to take on low-paying patients will be the greatest challenge in opening a clinic in Lacey, Splawn said. She added that a building in Hawks Prairie has been purchased to house the clinic.

The location was based on tracking the patients using the Olympia clinic, nursing manager Nicole Liu said.

"We have a quite a few patients that come from Yelm, and hopefully, the Lacey clinic will serve some of them," she said.

She said local patients include Mason County residents, college students with no employer-paid insurance, the homeless, disabled people and people with low-wage jobs who rely on the state-subsidized Basic Health Plan.

About 63 percent of the Olympia clinic patients earn federal poverty-level wages — $21,200 a year or less for a family of four. A little more than 9 percent make more than twice that, with the rest somewhere in between.