Cascade Medical – Successes, Challenges, and the Road Ahead

Last week, the Echo ran an opinion piece penned by an outside group unaffiliated with our organization. The authors expressed concern with Cascade Medical on a number of fronts: questioning our financial stability, our work environment, and the quality of care we provide our community.

Let us be clear. In any organization, there is always and will always be opportunities for improvement. We recognize this and embrace all the challenges and opportunities consistent improvement efforts afford us. That stated, the opinion piece wrapped understandable questions in faulty assumptions, sweeping generalizations, and attempted to take challenges all health care providers are wrestling with statewide and paint them as concerns unique to Cascade Medical.

It is beyond unfortunate these narratives are actively and needlessly creating incorrect impressions in our community and anxiety in our employees, on top of the accumulated stressors brought on by a pandemic that is still very much dominating both our health care workers’ professional and emotional spaces.

We want to take this time to let you know, without reservation, that Cascade Medical is strong – our people are strong, our finances are strong, and our dual commitments to improvement, and to our community, have never been stronger. In the following, we’ll tell you why, and how.

Financial Viability - Cascade Medical is in robust shape financially, even in the face of statewide financial challenges brought on by the now two-year old pandemic. Here are the numbers: CM is in a loss position this year with about $1.5 million negative margin through August. Nearly every single medical facility in Washington faced losses as well, some critically. However, our cash reserves are strong, and we anticipate ending the year with more cash in the bank in December than we had in January. We are helped by last year being a record year for us, with a positive change in net position of over $7.7 million in 2021. Throughout the years we have consistently grown our cash reserves, giving us a good base to invest in our team and capital improvements. The full story is that through vigilant fiduciary care, our cash balance has never been as high as it is today. This has allowed us to weather this pandemic with no furloughs now or in the future, include much deserved retention bonuses for our staff, and we plan on offering wage adjustments in the coming year that will keep us competitive with our regional partners and more closely align with the price increases we’ve all been living through. Additionally, our initiative and efforts with grants and gifts in partnership with Cascade Medical Foundation allowed us to procure a Mobile Clinic, and proactive pursuit of Federal funds allowed us to achieve capital improvements that will directly and positively affect patient care. Long story short – our reporting to the board is current, our cash position is strong, and we are using that position to attend to patient needs along with care for our team members.

Quality Patient Care - Our commitment to patient care and continual process improvement is strong. We are currently engaged in wholesale improvement work regarding our patient service experience. Much of that work is going on behind the scenes, and you have likely experienced some of those improvements already. For instance, we know in the recent past many of you have had phone hold times longer than we…or anyone…would have wanted. In the past 3 months, we have cut wait times of 3 minutes or more from 20% of calls to only 6% of calls. And we continue to work to improve that further. It’s just one example of a larger culture of improvement that thrives here.

Staff Retention, and Physician & Medical Care Accessibility - Nothing is more valuable to an organization than the people who make it what it is. That’s why retention is so important to us, and why we work so hard to ensure our team members view Cascade Medical as not just a place to work, but a place in which people succeed. We believe this not because we tell ourselves this – we believe this because the majority of our employees tell us this is so. In our last employee satisfaction survey, team members scored Cascade Medical overall at 77.62% with an 81.1%, 76.5% and 88.6% approval rating on “Organizational Assessment,” “Work Environment,” and “Supervision & Management,” respectively. Healthcare turnover numbers in Washington state have been a major challenge – 2022 saw a 24.7% rate of workforce turnover. Cascade Medical’s annualized turnover rate in 2022 is only 7.1%. An organization that boasts a turnover rate less than a third of the statewide average can be called many things, but we believe the word “toxic,” as alleged in the opinion piece, is not one of them. More to come on this, but we are also excited to welcome a new Physician to our care team, after the start of the new year.

You are welcome to attend our Cascade Medical Board meetings, 5:30 p.m. on October 27 and every month, to hear the latest on our efforts and strategic direction. You can attend in person or via Zoom. (www.cascademedical.org) If you would like to talk to a board member personally, please reach out! We would love the opportunity to field your questions and offer more context or information about your concerns on a one-on-one basis. In the meantime, know our commitment to you, our team members, and the community we serve is steadfast and strong.