Whatcom Deserves a Public Hospital

We are worth it. Whatcom County residents deserve a hospital or a network of clinics that works more closely in tune with the people. It may be a long term project but we can build momentum.

Rome wasn't built in a day. If you plan for Whatcom's future, plan for a public hospital.

Any implementation of a public hospital or network of clinics must be wide open for discussion and analysis. It would be a subject of democratic processes. It would be ours.

We don't have a public hospital?

Except for the Point Roberts Public Hospital District we do not. We primarily have PeaceHealth which is described as a private and religious institution.

Also, some residents in the far east area of the county in voter precint 178 are part of hospital district 304 based out of Skagit County.

A most recent Cascadia Daily News Article goes into more detail about the two districts that are part of Whatcom and the status of them.

What kind of hospital do you mean?

More specifically a Public Hospital District. This could take many forms in practice. To the website author it just makes sense to call the district a hospital for conversation and this website.

There are a few possibilities:

A hospital, a larger one
A hospital, a smaller one
A series of clinics, such as one in the rural county and one in Bellingham
Any variety of services the county wants

Who else has advocated for a Public Hospital District in Whatcom County?

The Whatcom Democrats 2024/2025 include it as one item in their platform: "Support creation of a Public Hospital District to fund a public hospital and increase healthcare options in Whatcom County, which currently has only one hospital."

Whatcom DSA passed a resolution supporting the creation of a public hospital district Oct 10 2024

Whatcom DSA has also advocated for a public hospital in the past in 2020

Looking towards the future, inspiration from precedent

A Public Hospital District (PHD) is a method available under Washington State Law for the county to own and operate hospitals and other health care facilities or services for the residents of such districts and visitors.

A picture of Washington State, USA, with areas covered by Public Hospital Districts in blue. Most of Whatcom County is notably not featured but many areas in the state are to signify they have a Public Hospital District — Public hospital districts in Washington state. Notably most of Whatcom County is not included in a district (Photo courtesy of Association of Washington Public Hospital Districts)

Indeed, the Public Hospital District concept is not totally new in Washington State and comes from 1945. Just one county over in Skagit County are several Public Hospital Districts. Today, nearly one-half of Washington's 90 hospitals are part of public hospital districts.

What are some alternatives?

Kind of a big topic...

More Community Health Centers? Some of which already operate in our area.

Bigger Monopolies? I.e no alternative. Basically the current situation.

Accounting for growth, change and need

Growth is another opportunity to shape the future of our county for the better. A Public Hospital District could adapt and augment to meet the needs of the county. Whatcom County is apparently "bracing for 30% population growth over 20 years" -- surely some of the growth can be accomodated for by a Public Hospital District rather than a monopoly.

A pro-active policy accounting for growth could help ensure care for our residents and visitors that is more independent. This would require broad public input and research but it would be worth it.

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Learn more background

A post sponsored by PeaceHealth about the history of hospitals in the area.

A video about Public Hospital Districts by the Association of WA Public Hospital Districts.

A video titled #Gov101: Public Hospital Districts by the Washington State Auditor’s Office.

An article "What do you know about Public Hospital Districts?" by the Salish Current

Accessibility Statement

Accessibility Statement for Whatcom Public Hospital

This is an accessibility statement from WhatcomPublicHospital.org.

Measures to support accessibility

WhatcomPublicHospital.org volunteers take the following measures to ensure accessibility of the website WhatcomPublicHospital.org:

Include accessibility as part of our mission statement.
Assign clear accessibility goals and responsibilities.

Conformance status

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) defines requirements for designers and developers to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. It defines three levels of conformance: Level A, Level AA, and Level AAA. Whatcom Public Hospital is assessed with WCAG 2.2 level AA. It has been assessed to partial conformance which means that the content has been evaluated as having no programmatic issues and some manual testing has occurred.

Technologies and tools used to assess this website include browser DevTools, Axe DevTools, Arc Toolkit, Mac VoiceOver and Playwright with Axe-core testing.

This content was reviewed by an experienced accessibility tester July 2025. The goal with the project is to match AA as much as possible and also incrementally meet some AAA criteria

Feedback

We welcome your feedback on the accessibility of Whatcom Public Hospital. Please let us know if you encounter accessibility barriers on Whatcom Public Hospital:

Send an email to the website operator

We try to respond to feedback within 2 business days.

Date

This statement was created on July 6 2025 using the W3C Accessibility Statement Generator Tool.