Summit Pacific Medical Center’s new chief executive officer is taking a county-wide approach to health care at the East County facility.

While Grays Harbor County Hospital District 1 and Summit Pacific Medical Center are in East County, CEO Josh Martin says his aim is to fold in patients from the west side of the county. A big reason for that county-wide focus is Summit Pacific’s urgent care facility, the only urgent care facility in Grays Harbor County.

“Since I’ve arrived, we’ve expanded urgent care knowing we’re the only urgent care facility to serve the Grays Harbor community,” Martin said. “We’ve hired eight additional providers in the past eight months. And all of that is just creating more access for our patients and giving them more options.”

Martin is originally from Twin Falls Idaho, and after living in Boise, Idaho for some 20 years, he moved to Washington state five years ago.

For three years, Martin was the chief administrative officer for Grays Harbor Community Hospital in Aberdeen. In 2016, he was hired as chief operations officer for Summit Pacific, and in March 2017, after the resignation of former CEO Renee Jensen, Martin took the helm of East County health care.

“By design it was very strategic,” Martin said of the transition from COO to CEO. “I had a lot of background of the community history — knowing that Summit serves a broader community than just East County, and knowing the needs of ‘west county’ and knowing the broader picture helped me look at integration and helping to better serve the broader region.”

Martin has identified some deficiencies within the county health care.

“My hope is to look at the broader needs of the community as a needs assessment and see where we have challenges of access,” Martin said. “We have half the providers we need. What is Summit Pacific doing to address that need?”

Filling in that gap is the upcoming wellness center which will break ground in September.

“It’s based on what does the community need that Summit can offer and do well?” Martin said.

The wellness center also will help to build and strengthen partnerships throughout the county.

“We can definitely start to build new partnerships that haven’t existed before, including partnerships in west county,” Martin said. “My commitment and what I would like to accomplish is to put the health back in healthcare. Move away from sick care and start focusing on keeping patients out of the hospital through outpatient care, and integrating all those in partnership. We need to think about the whole patient. Holistic and alternative in combination with traditional medicine is really important. That’s the vision with the wellness center. It is the vehicle to help us to start to move the dial with our community health needs.”

Partnerships could include the school districts throughout the county, or the YMCA. The hospital will continue to expand virtual care, and eventually, they may have providers traveling into the community where patients live and work to educate.

“Currently, Grays Harbor County ranks 38 out or 39 for overall health — What’s Summit Pacific going to do about it?” Martin said. “We have to start thinking differently. Through Summit we will build the healthiest community in the nation — which is a bold statement. It’s going to take all of us collectively. It’s not Josh Martin, CEO, it’s how are we all as a village, as a community, going to accomplish it? It’s through more ownership, more wellness. It’s a huge opportunity and challenge that will take many years of work. The key is getting it started.”

Martin has four priorities: treating the whole patient, care coordination, preventing unnecessary visits, and expanding services and offerings with the wellness center.

“I want Summit to be a trusted provider for the community,” Martin said. “For information — with the many changes facing the Affordable Care Act; for education — in that we educated people on how to eat well and live well, or give diagnoses, or seasonal health concerns; for service — when a patient needs care, they think of us first, and knowing that is based on quality, access and cost, and the reputation that our community chooses us. That’s really important.”