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Health Care Provider Impact Statement for King County

Number of docs in 2009: 6,267. That’s 32.7 physicians per 10,000 population¹, the highest rate in Washington. Washington’s rate is 21.2 physicians per 10,000; the national average is about 20.2 per 10,000². Washington imports about 85% of its physicians from other states or nations.³

Health professional breakout:  

---Harborview Medical Center and the University of Washington Medical Center are both run by UW Medicine, which, combined, has about 1,215 MDs, 40 physician assistants and 43 nurse practitioners on its roster.

---Northwest Hospital and Medical Center has 167 MDs, five DOs and three nurse practitioners working at its two campuses. It also has a network of 214 MDs, 10 DOs and seven nurse practitioners who are based offsite.

---University of Washington's Valley Medical Center in Renton has 477 MDs, 18 DOs, 36 physician assistants and 25 nurse practitioners on its roster.

---Swedish Medical Center employs 260 MDs and seven DOs at its campuses (Ballard, Cherry Hill, Edmonds, First Hill, Issaquah, Lake Sammamish and Redmond). It also has 213 MDs and five DOs at its other clinics in the Greater Seattle area and four MDs at its clinic in Snoqualmie. Swedish also lists 902 other MDs and 12 DOs among its network of physicians.

---Virginia Mason Medical Center has 343 MDs, six DOs, 30 physician assistants and 29 nurse practitioners working on its main campus. It also has 98 MDs, two DOs, eight physician assistants and nine nurse practitioners distributed throughout its network of clinics in the Greater Seattle area.

---Seattle Children's Hospital has 613 MDs, three DOs, 20 physician assistants and 119 nurse practitioners on its immediate Seattle-area staff list. It has hundreds of other health professionals with whom it works throughout Washington.

---Overlake Hospital employs 203 MDs and two DOs at its hospital in Bellevue and its clinics in Bellevue, Issaquah, Kirkland and Mercer Island, among others. It also says another 565 MDs and 10 DOs in those communities are also part of its network.

---Group Health Medical Center in Bellevue employs 140 MDs, one DO, 20 physician assistants and nine nurse practitioners.

---Group Health's Capitol Hill clinic employs 69 MDs, one DO, 13 physician assistants and nine nurse practitioners.

---Group Health's Downtown Seattle clinic has seven MDs and two physician assistants.

---Group Health's Northgate clinic has 13 MDs, two physician assistants and one nurse practitioner.

---Group Health's Factoria clinic employs 10 MDs and two physician assistants. 

---Group Health's Redmond Medical Center has nine MDs and two physician assistants.

---Group Health's Northshore clinic in Bothell has eight MDs, one physician assistant and two nurse practitioners.

---Group Health Medical Center in Burien has 13 MDs, one DO and three physician assistants.

---Group Health's clinic in Renton has 14 MDs, one DO, two physician assistants and one nurse practitioner.

---Group Health's Federal Way clinic has 20 MDs, one DO, three physician assistants and one nurse practitioner.

---Group Health's clinic in Kent has five MDs and two physician assistants.

---Highline Medical Center employs 160 MDs on its main campus in Burien. It also has 10 DOs, five physician assistants and seven nurse practitioners there. It also has 16 MDs, one physician assistant and two nurse practitioners on its other campus in Tukwila. It also employs 32 MDs, one DO, four physician assistants and two nurse practitioners at a network of other clinics around the Greater Seattle area.

---Auburn Regional Medical Center employs 96 MDs and three DOs at its hospital and Auburn clinics.

---Evergreen Hospital Medical Center in Kirkland employs 195 MDs, seven DOs, two physician assistants and six nurse practitioners.

---The Franciscan Health System's St. Francis Hospital in Federal Way has 55 MDs, one DO, two physician assistants and two nurse practitioners who work at the hospital. It also has another 105 MDs, eight DOs, two physician assistants and three nurse practitioners that it draws upon in Federal Way and Auburn.

---Franciscan's St. Elizabeth Hospital in Enumclaw has 17 MDs, one DO, three physician assistants and one nurse practitioners. It also has 12 MDs and one DO from the community who also see patients at the hospital.

---The Seattle Cancer Care Alliance has 272 MDs and one DO.

---The Veterans' Administration Puget Sound Health Care System has on its roster 519 physicians in King County, four DOs, 67 physician assistants and 12 dentists.

---Fairfax Hospital for Behavioral Health in Kirkland has 12 MDs.

---Snoqualmie Valley Hospital has 14 MDs, two DOs and four nurse practitioners.⁴

Voice from King County: Rodger McCollum is the CEO of the King County Public Hospital District 4 in Snoqualmie. He says his hospital is in a much different situation than many rural hospitals in eastern Washington. It’s located on the Seattle urban fringe, just 7-8 miles from Issaquah. It’s a critical access hospital with its own emergency room and two hospitalists (“I don’t know how we’d do without them,” he says.), in-hospital primary care and specialty care clinics, as well as several community clinics. McCollum says his workforce is stable. “We’re on the outer edge of Seattle, so it’s a desirable place to live and work,” he says. Many of his doctors have come from the bigger Seattle hospitals. The hospital does some recruiting there, but “people call us about jobs.” He says the hospital hosts all kinds of students, everything but medical students. “We’ve thought about reaching out to the new osteopathic school in Yakima, but just haven’t done it yet.”

Health care/social assistance employment in King County ⁹: 114,254 (out of 1,123,000 jobs). It’s the county’s second-largest employer, providing about $1.4 billion in payroll, about 7.9% of the county’s total payroll.

¹According to the UW 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)