East Adams Rural Healthcare downsizing primary care walk-in clinic to save hospital
East Adams Rural Healthcare is downsizing its primary care clinic as part of the effort to keep the hospital in Ritzville open.
The Ritzville hospital had four or five physicians working its clinic as of last year, providing primary care to patients in the county southwest of Spokane. Amid financial and management problems that surfaced late last year, several primary care providers were laid off. As of June 1, only one provider will remain to run the facility as part of a "clinic reset."
"The purpose of the clinic reset is to strengthen the foundation of our care delivery model by improving clinical workflows, enhancing patient access, and ensuring safe, consistent, and high-quality care. This reset provides an opportunity to evaluate current processes, eliminate inefficiencies, and align operations with best practices, regulatory requirements, and the evolving needs of our patients and community," reads an open letter from the hospital released earlier this week.
The clinic was initially slated for closure at the end of March amid the hospital's broader financial difficulties, said hospital operations officer Dallas Killian.
"The admin team made the decision to close the clinic because it was essentially hemorrhaging a ton of money each month, and we had to act quick, otherwise the entire hospital could close," he said. "We were able to overcome a few hurdles during that time, and we were able to look at the possibility of keeping the clinic open with one provider because that's what's viable."
Under the new structure, one provider will be on site at the clinic, with three providers rotating throughout the week between work at the clinic and other duties. Killian estimates the single provider would see approximately 17 or 18 patients a day. Those who already use East Adams Rural Healthcare will not need to re-establish care at the clinic after the reset.
The clinic and hospital also will no longer provide interventional pain management services, which include nerve blocks, steroid injections, radiofrequency ablations, trigger point injections, and other similar procedures for chronic pain management. These services were previously provided by Holistic Pain Management. The hospital hopes to re-establish these forms of care in the future.
"We are actively working to recruit and bring on an in-house pain management provider so we can restore these services to the community. At this time, there is no confirmed timeline, but this is a priority for us, and we are working on it as quickly as possible," Killian said.
Hospital leaders claim former hospital CEO Corey Fedie and others had concealed the hospital's dire financial situation from the hospital district's board. At the time, the hospital district had lost $13.4 million in the past three years and accumulated $10 million in debt. The hospital avoided closure at the beginning of 2026 and made plans to change the hospital's federal designation.
The rural emergency hospital designation was created in 2023. A hospital under this designation is allowed to provide emergency department services and observation care. Any additional outpatient services cannot exceed an annual per-patient average length of stay of 24 hours. A rural emergency hospital is prohibited from providing most inpatient services, but in exchange they are provided $3.4 million annually from the federal government.
According to Killian, the Ritzville hospital was approved as a rural emergency hospital last month and should begin receiving payments from the federal government in May. In exchange, the hospital has shed its inpatient care and swing beds, which are meant to keep people in the same facility after moving from acute treatment to rehabilitation.
With those federal payments soon in hand, the hospital has done a "financial 180," Killian said.
"We are crawling out of the hole that we were previously found in. We are turning the corner," he said.
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