Yakima Valley Memorial will become first outside hospital to join Virginia Mason

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Virginia Mason Medical Center

Virginia Mason Medical Center

Annie Zak

Staff Writer- Puget Sound Business Journal

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Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital and Virginia Mason Medical Center have started formal talks about creating an affiliation, which would mean greater access to resources and care in Yakima.

This would be the first affiliation in which another hospital would become a part of the Virginia Mason Health System, the parent company of a group of affiliated organizations including Virginia Mason Medical Center and the Benaroya Research Institute.

With the Affordable Care Act and other changes in the health care industry, more and more hospitals have affiliated with each other. Providence Health & Services became affiliated with Swedish Health Services in 2012 and the University of Washington partnered with PeaceHealth last year. Hospitals may choose to affiliate for many reasons, ranging from budget issues to improving the quality of care provided to patients.

Some rural community hospitals see affiliations as a way to ease financial strains by partnering with larger, more comprehensive tertiary care centers in a time when health care costs are rising and technology is changing rapidly.

"Our goal is not to become the biggest, but to partner with each other to create a broader network of care," said Virginia Mason CEO Gary Kaplan.

Yakima Valley Memorial CEO Russ Meyers hopes the affiliation will translate to a better quality of care for patients at a lower cost.

"We think in the long term there is a high risk for an organization like ours to remain independent," said Meyers. "We're looking to see what partnerships might better serve this community in the long term."

This means specialists sorely needed in Yakima could come from Virginia Mason, and if a patient needs to be transferred from Yakima's community hospital to Seattle's tertiary care center — which can address a broader range of health issues — the two organizations could share patient information and data more easily.

The process, from the soon-to-be-signed letter of intent to the finalization of the affiliation, is expected to take from three to six months.

Annie Zak covers the health care and biotechnology industries.