Health Care Providers Impact Statement for Asotin County
Number of docs in 2009: 43. That’s 20.1 physicians per 10,000 population1: the fifth highest rate in eastern Washington. Washington’s rate is 21.2 physicians per 10,000; the national average is about 20.2 per 10,000.2 Washington imports about 85% of its physicians from other states or nations.3
Health professional breakout:
---Tri-State Hospital in Clarkston employs 13 MDs and two DOs (mostly emergency room physicians and hospitalists) at its hospital. On its campus, it also has three medical clinics; they employ seven MDs and one nurse practitioner. There’s also a medical office building that houses the following: a wound center with two MDs, a kidney clinic with two MDs and an ARNP, a primary care center with an MD and a PA, a sleep center and a physical therapy clinic.
---In the rest of Clarkston, there are about 20 other doctors in a variety of specialties.4
Number of current WWAMI medical students from Asotin County: one
Number of current WSU pharmacy students from Asotin County: four
Number of current WSU nursing students from Asotin County: seven
Number of current WSU Spokane nutrition/exercise physiology students from Asotin County: one
UW School of Medicine clinical faculty in Asotin County: none5
Health professionals in Asotin County who graduated from Washington colleges: unknown6
Clarkston does not currently have clerkship or residency programs for WWAMI medical students.7
Clarkston hosts some of the 41 professional preceptors who work with WSU pharmacy students at clinical sites in southeastern Washington and north central Idaho.
Voice from Asotin County: Don Wee, CEO of Tri-State Hospital in Clarkston, says he’s having a harder time recruiting primary care doctors, in part because medical schools are pushing students into subspecialties. But with the average age of physicians in the Clarkston facility in the mid-50s, Wee knows he’ll have to replace retiring doctors in the next few years. For now, the facility has not been very active in working with UW School of Medicine to bring students in, other than occasional RUOP students. Sandi Kramer, the hospital’s director of clinic operations, says the facility has been more successful in helping to train local people for nursing and pharmacy positions. But doctor education is a different story. Wee says he’s interested in working with WSU to change that.
Asotin County unemployment rate (Nov. 2012): 6.4% (state average 7.8% seasonally adjusted, 7.3% not seasonally adjusted) 8
Health care/social assistance employment in Asotin County9: 936 (out of 5,600 jobs). It’s the county’s third-largest employer, providing about $7.25 million in payroll, about 17.5% of the county’s total payroll.
Tripp Umbach estimate of annual impact of Spokane academic health sciences on Asotin County (2009): 4.2 jobs, $800,000 in economic impact, $63,000 in local taxes
Tripp Umbach projection of annual impact of Spokane academic health sciences on Asotin County (2030): 35 jobs, $6 million, $420,000 in local taxes
1UW Center for Health Workforce Studies
2UW Center for Health Workforce Studies
3Association of American Medical Colleges
4Numbers gleaned from hospital and clinic websites
5UW Clinical faculty listing: http://depts.washington.edu/fammed/clinical_faculty/listings
6Numbers calculated from hospital and clinic websites
7http://uwmedicine.washington.edu/Education/WWAMI/Documents/2011%20WWAMI%20Maps.pdf
8Washington Department of Employment Security
9Washington Department of Employment Security (third quarter, 2010)