Negotiations to form a strategic alliance between Valley Medical Center and UW Medicine are reaching the final stages, with a draft agreement to go before Valley commissioners May 2.
As has been typical in recent board meetings, the commissioners received a briefing from George Beal, the medical center’s corporate legal counsel and chief negotiator.
In recent days Valley and UW Medicine negotiators have reviewed draft agreements; such a meeting was planned for Thursday which could have yielded a draft that would go before the commission and the UW Medicine trustees.
The good news, Beal said, is that there is general agreement on all the points that have been on the table from the beginning.
“You’re not going to see a lot of surprises,” Beal told the commissioners.
The board meeting on May 2 could last hours and the board also will schedule additional special meetings, open to the public, to analyze the agreement. At an earlier meeting, the commissioners were told to expect an agreement of about 50 pages.
Valley’s board in January unanimously agreed to a deadline of May 31 to approve the alliance.
Before he left the meeting about 30 minutes early, Commissioner Anthony Hemstad, as he has done in the past, said the board should not be in a hurry to act on an alliance that could last for 45 years. The initial agreement is for 15 years, with two 15-year extensions.
He again suggested a merger of Valley Medical and UW Medicine but in turn said that’s not possible under existing laws. Still, he favors some sort of affiliation with UW Medicine.
“I do think the tie-up with the UW makes sense, but it should be the right tie-up,” Hemstad said in an interview Tuesday. Whether he will support the negotiated agreement “remains to be seen,” he said. “I want to see the documents.”
Three board members, a majority, have expressed support for the alliance. They are Don Jacobson, Carolyn Parnell and Sue Bowman, the board president.
Hemstad missed a presentation by Valley’s general counsel, David Smith, about the process in which an area can de-annex or withdraw from the hospital district.
The hospital district has received a resolution adopted by the Bellevue City Council requesting that the hospital district and UW Medicine consider the de-annexation of the Newport Hills area and that the district itself support the withdrawal.
Patti Mann, a candidate for Bellevue City Council, in public comment told the commissioners the Newport Hills neighborhood where she lives didn’t exist when the hospital district formed. The district boundaries are now illogical, she said, because few people in Newport Hills seek medical care at Valley Medical.
Hemstad attended the April 11 meeting of the Maple Valley City Council when it adopted a de-annexation resolution similar to Bellevue’s. As of Monday, the hospital district had yet to receive the formal resolution from Maple Valley.
Such resolutions won’t trigger a formal process to de-annex an area and the hospital district doesn’t need to respond to them, Smith told the commissioners.
Both resolutions contain wording that the announcement of a strategic alliance “provides an opportunity to reconsider the appropriate boundaries” of the hospital district.
Smith, the Valley attorney, in his presentation had wondered whether any hospital commissioner had had contact with the Maple Valley council. He mentioned Hemstad in particular.
Hemstad spoke at the Maple Valley council meeting, he said in the interview, but it was informal; he hadn’t been to a council meeting in about a year. He said he didn’t speak on the de-annexation resolution, although he said in the interview that Maple Valley’s resolution was modeled after Bellevue’s.
Hemstad resigned as Maple Valley city manager in 2008 because of time conflicts between Valley board and Maple Valley council meetings.
What would trigger the process to de-annex is a petition signed by 25 percent of the voters in the “withdrawal area” or Valley’s board proposing the withdrawal from the district. Valley’s board in 2006 rejected similar requests from the Newport Hills area, Maple Valley and Black Diamond.
Valley’s board can reject de-annexation if it finds the loss of territory would would benefit the withdrawn area and if it would be “conducive” to the general welfare of those who remain. Smith and others pointed out that those who leave the district are still obligated to pay for any bonds they approved through their property taxes. Also, the remaining property owners could face higher taxes if the areas withdraw.
The King County Council also must approve the de-annexation.
Under certain conditions, de-annexation could go to a vote of all the voters in the district, although those in the de-annexation area would have to pay for the election.
Roodman suggested such an election could cost between $50,000 and $100,000.
“I think someone has sold these folks a bill of goods,” Roodman said.
The de-annexation presentation was for informational purposes only, Roodman said.
Roodman pointed out in his comments near the end of the meeting that about 20,000 people with Maple Valley addresses use Valley Medical’s primary, urgent care and specialty clincs.
The Lake Sawyer Primary Care clinic opened in 2008; that clinic had 17,000 patient visits last year and that number is expected to grow to more than 18,000 this year.
