Health Care Providers Impact Statement for Spokane County
Number of docs in 2009: 1,172. That’s 25.0 physicians per 10,000 population1: the third 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: Spokane County has four major hospitals: Providence Sacred Heart, Providence Holy Family, Deaconess and Valley.
---Deaconess Hospital has 715 MDs and 32 DOs in its staff directory.
---Valley Hospital lists 403 MDs and 14 DOs in its staff directory. (Many overlap, given that Deaconess and Valley are owned by the same company.)
---Providence Sacred Heart and Providence Holy Family each list 829 MDs and 39 DOs on staff and from throughout the community.
---Group Health's Riverfront Medical Center has 25 MDs, two physician assistants and two nurse practitioners.
---Group Health's Lidgerwood clinic employs 10 MDs, one DO and one nurse practitioner.
---Group Health's clinic on the South Hill has five MDs.
---Group Health's clinic in Veradale has seven MDs and one nurse practitioner.
---Spokane's Veterans' Hospital has on staff 81 MDs, seven DOs, seven physician assistants, 24 nurse practitioners, four optometrists and two dentists.
---The Shriners Hospital for Children has nine MDs on staff.
---St. Luke's Rehabilitation Institute has 10 MDs on staff and one nurse practitioner.4
Number of current WWAMI Spokane and Pullman medical students from Spokane County: eight
Number of current WSU pharmacy students from Spokane County: 45
Number of current WSU nursing students from Spokane County: 292
Number of current WSU Spokane nutrition/exercise physiology students from Spokane County: 40
Number of current WSU Spokane speech/hearing sciences students from Spokane County: 34
Number of current WSU Spokane health policy students from Spokane County: 11
UW School of Medicine clinical faculty in Spokane County: 70 MDs, four DOs, one Pharm.D. and five physician assistants5
Health professionals in Spokane County who graduated from Washington colleges:
---Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center and its sister hospital, Providence Holy Family, employ 80 UW School of Medicine graduates. They also list 84 doctors who did their residencies in Washington, 21 doctors who served fellowships in the state and two UW dental school graduates.
---Group Health's Riverfront Medical Center has six UW medical graduates, nine former residents, one graduate of UW's physician assistant program, one UW dental graduate and one WSU College of Nursing graduate.
---Group Health's Lidgerwood clinic has one UW medical grad and two former residents.
---Group Health's South Hill clinic has one UW medical graduate and one former resident.
---Group Health's clinic in Veradale has one UW medical grad and three doctors who did their residencies in Washington.
---The Veterans' Hospital employs seven UW medical school graduates and three UW physician assistant alumni.
---St. Luke's Rehabilitation Institute has two UW medical graduates on staff and two who did their residencies in Washington.6
Spokane has three medical residency programs (family medicine, psychiatry and internal medicine). In addition, Spokane shares a rural family medicine residency with Colville in Stevens County; the student spends one year in Spokane and two in Colville. Spokane is also home for third- and fourth-year medical student clerkships in these areas: chronic care, family medicine, emergency medicine, internal medicine, neurology, obstetrics/gynecology, pediatrics, psychiatry and surgery.7
Spokane has 430 doctors serving as preceptors for medical clerkship and residency programs. In addition, the Spokane area is home to some of the 231 preceptors who work with WSU pharmacy students at clinical sites in northeastern Washington and northern Idaho.
The WSU College of Pharmacy has three residency programs in Spokane County. Two are in hospitals. The other is a geriatric residency for an elder service program. Many faculty members are practicing pharmacists in Spokane and care directly for patients while accompanied by pharmacy students.
WSU pharmacy faculty and students at the university's Drug Information Center in Spokane answer 2,000 phone calls each year from Washington state health care professionals who seek prescription drug information.
Pharmacy students in Spokane provide more than 250 hours each of health care during their three years of hands-on training. Every October through December student pharmacists vaccinate several thousand people against the flu in Spokane and often reach out to at least one underserved population in or beyond the city.
The WSU College of Nursing operates one of its two Clinical Performance & Simulation Labs in Spokane. The lab provides a supervised place where nursing students can practice their skills on life-sized manikins.
WSU Spokane is home to the university's Sleep and Performance Research Center. Two research professors, three clinical fellows and several assistants are studying questions about how the lack of sleep affects the way people perform in their jobs and their lives. The results from the studies will help the military, public agencies and private companies manage their employees' sleep habits so that workers can do their jobs more safely and efficiently.
Spokane County unemployment rate (Nov. 2012): 7.7% (state average 7.8% seasonally adjusted, 7.3% not seasonally adjusted) 8
Health care/social assistance employment in Spokane County 9: 33,983 (out of 196,400 jobs). It’s the county’s largest employer, right behind government, providing about $353 million in payroll, about 18.7% of the county’s total payroll.
Tripp Umbach estimate of annual impact of Spokane academic health sciences on Spokane County (2009): 662 jobs, $127.3 million in economic impact, $10 million in local taxes
Tripp Umbach projection of annual impact of Spokane academic health sciences on Spokane County (2030): 5566 jobs, $960 million, $67 million 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)
Congressional District: 5
Legislative Districts: 3, 4, 6, 7, 9
Population: 471,200
County Seat: Spokane
Project Lead The Way affiliate director Sylvia Oliver (second from left) assists teacher trainees in Spokane with a heart rate experiment.
"They hoped if we were successful, other school districts would adopt Project Lead the Way."
(Photo by Julie Titone)
Read more about Project Lead the Way teacher training.