Day: April 14, 2026

In the annual public meeting with SEARHC officials on April 6, Sitka residents listed what they see as systemic issues with the Native-owned health care nonprofit that provides medical and hospital services for all of Sitka and serves 25 other Southeast communities.

Sitkans expressed concerns and ideas on how the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium could improve its communications,  care coordination, elder care, telehealth, medical recordkeeping, billing, patient portal functionality and patient follow-up, among other topics.

SEARHC leaders and Sitka Community Health Council members collected notes on sheets of butcher paper while listening to feedback from about 40 participants, including many longtime SEARHC patients and medical professionals. 

The two-hour meeting at Centennial Hall was held in accordance with the 2019 sale agreement wherein the city sold Sitka Community Hospital, its assets and business to SEARHC.

Staff from Spruce Root, a Native-owned business development organization, helped facilitate the meeting and is to create a report on public input to be sent on to SEARHC leaders.

Meeting participant Susan Litman said after the two-hour session that she hopes the meeting’s facilitated format, which was new this year, will bring about solutions addressing the issues raised by members of the public.

“I’m hopeful, because nothing happened after the last one,” Litman said. 

At last year’s public meeting, residents brought up challenges with SEARHC medical care in a two-hour “listening session.”

JJ Carlson, a Health Council member, said “there’s frustration from community members that there wasn’t any action from the feedback people shared last year.”

After last year’s meeting, the board of directors received a copy of the meeting minutes summarizing the dozens of personal stories. Carlson said that format didn’t give the board clear recommendations for action.

“SEARHC has that board as its governing body, and they don’t quite do the listening to the same degree that (the Health Council does),” Carlson said. 

Carlson said that hiring facilitators and focusing on systemic issues in this year’s public meeting represents a “move towards having more robust documentation that could be absorbed better by the SEARHC board of directors.” 

At the April 6 meeting SEARHC Chief Medical Officer Dr. Cate Buley, chair of the Health Council, said the goal of the new format “is to translate concerns into recommendations and priorities.”

Buley said she and Chief Operating Officer Martin Benning will deliver reports from the public meeting to the SEARHC directors. 

“We will bring that forward, and those recommendations are going to help guide our further discussions and our review with the Health Council,” Buley said. 

After Buley’s opening remarks, participants gathered in three breakout groups: one focused on community needs, another emphasized the quality of patients’ experience at SEARHC, and the third looked at the systems-level approach to clinical practices, policy and strategy. 

Participants spent about 40 minutes discussing concerns in one topic area, before moving stations to consider challenges and propose solutions in a second topic area.

In a group discussing community needs, Sitkans said they need better access to primary care providers; that SEARHC could improve services by building partnerships with other local organizations; and that expanded services are needed in patient advocacy, elder care, home health care, long-term care and end-of-life care.

In discussions on patient access and experience, Sitkans stressed the need for centralized communication between SEARHC, out-of-network specialists and patients; clear processes for care coordination between case managers, specialists and primary care providers; an improved online patient portal; and better communication in general. 

“Telephone, email, the whole system is broken,” Health Council member Dr. David Lam said in regard to SEARHC communications. 

While discussing systems, policies and strategy, Sitkans said they’d like transparency from SEARHC as to its strategic plan.

Nicole Miller, who worked at SEARHC for four years, and recently moved on to lead the Brave Heart Volunteers nonprofit, said “morale is very low” among SEARHC hospital staff.

“I feel like SEARHC has opportunities to fix it, and I just wish they would,” Miller said.

Meeting participants questioned why many SEARHC administrators like Dr. Buley live in Juneau, rather than Sitka, and why CEO Charles Clement lives primarily in Utah.

Miller acknowledged these concerns and said she believes Clement did a great service for Sitka by securing the federal funding required for SEARHC to construct the new Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center facility.

“Now I just hope SEARHC uses it to its fullest potential and staffs it appropriately,” Miller said.

Participants also discussed how Clement is being paid more than $2.6 million a year, according to recent 2024 tax filings.

Commenting on the new hospital facility, Health Council member Lam said he’s “not sure why we’re spending $300 million to have the same number of hospital rooms that we have now.”  He expects SEARHC will eventually tear down the old hospital, which SEARHC took over from the U.S. Indian Health Service in 1986. 

A ceremonial opening of the new hospital and medical office building is set for April 23, and patients will be welcomed starting this summer, officials said. 

At the close of the two-hour meeting, note-takers for each of the breakout groups shared summaries of what they heard during discussions.

After the meeting Sitka resident Connie Kreiss told the Sentinel that she believes the new facilitated format “dilutes the process” of gathering public feedback.

The Health Council and SEARHC are responsible “to hear the concerns and figure out solutions,” Kreiss said. “It’s not our job to prioritize the concerns and come up with solutions. … They’re supposed to listen.” 

SEARHC pediatrician Dr. David Vastola told the Sentinel the new format could make room for more people to share their ideas. 

“It takes a certain kind of person to get up in front of a big group of people and speak, whereas somebody who’s maybe not so assertive will sit here and talk to you and share their good ideas,” Vastola said. 

Four-year Health Council member Susan Padilla told the Sentinel she was “skeptical” the format was going to work at the beginning, but felt the conversation was good. 

“We got a lot of good feedback,” Padilla said. “People were focused on the questions that they were asking, so I felt that that was good. … I’m not sure what direction or what path or how this will turn out, but this was another attempt to gain community communication for their health needs here in town.”

Alana Peterson, a Health Council member and executive director of Spruce Root, told the Sentinel today that the third-party meeting facilitators “are working on a report right now.”

Peterson said Health Council members have already received notes from the April 6 meeting and now “Spruce Root is preparing a report and then some recommendations for next steps for SEARHC based on what we heard, and based on how we understand and consider the best ways for organizations to be working in communities.”

The Sitka Community Health Council was established in 2019 as part of the city’s agreement selling Sitka Community Hospital to SEARHC.  No other Southeast Alaska community has a Health Council, or a mechanism by which to hold an annual meeting with SEARHC leaders. 

The Sitka Council meets quarterly, and each year opens a portion of its spring meeting to the public, according to the group’s charter. It sends all of its meeting minutes to the SEARHC board.

Current members of the Council are SEARHC officials Buley, Benning and hospital administrator William Spivey, PT; Sitka city administrator John Leach; Sitka Tribe of Alaska Tribal Council members Peterson and Woody Widmark; and at-large members Carlson, Lam, Amy Ainslie, Sally Tonkin and Susan Padilla.

The post Sitkans seeking results from SEARHC session appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.

Representatives from Moffatt & Nichol, the borough’s advisors on the Lutak Dock rebuild, presented elected officials last week with three potential dock design concepts.

The concepts represent a mostly new starting point after the borough cut ties with former dock contractor Turnagain Marine. The borough assembly is scheduled to make its top pick of the three Moffatt & Nichol options later this month. 

One of the options is essentially a more limited version of the design by Turnagain, Moffatt & Nichol project lead Paul Wallis said last month. 

Like the Turnagain design, the concept would build a new dock face in front of the existing dock, also known as encapsulation. Unlike the Turnagain design, it proposes a structure far smaller than the existing dock, with the rest of the old section demolished and replaced with rock pile, also known as rip-rap. 

The other two concepts would demolish the existing dock and replace it with a new type of structure. One would rebuild a new flat dock face, also known as a bulkhead, for barges to tie up to. The other would trade a flat dock face for a loading ramp on a float, allowing barges to unload over rip-rap. 

Each concept appears to have pros and cons. According to Moffatt & Nichol engineers, the encapsulation concept — the one most similar to Turnagain’s — might have advantages in permitting speed and level of functionality, both during construction and once it’s built. It might also be the least cost-effective, Wallis said.

At the moment, none of the concepts include cost estimates. 

The borough and Moffatt & Nichol representatives have stressed that the contractor’s role is to draw up a broad plan outlining shape and functionality, but will stop short of a detailed, ready-to-build design. 

That work will be left for a new contractor, expected to be selected from a bidding process at the end of July to finish and build the design. 

Despite the lack of specificity, Wallis assured officials last week that all the concepts are viable. 

That includes the ability to complete federal design-specific permitting before a key deadline: the source of much of the dock funding, the Federal Maritime Administration, has said permitting must be complete by Sept. 2027, or the funding could be taken away. 

Wallis said the subcontractor slated to handle the permitting process has said permitting for all three concepts would be able to meet that deadline. 

It also includes the ability to construct the concept within the borough’s total unspent dock funds — roughly $22 million, according to a March 24 memo from borough manager Alekka Fullerton. 

Some officials shared concern for unforeseen cost increases given cost overruns with the previous Turnagain design. 

Wallis seemed to draw a line between his firm’s process and Turnagain’s. 

“The previous constructor promised to encapsulate the whole dock for the money you had available, but eventually it came to light that was not economically feasible,” Wallis said. “At that time (Moffatt & Nichol) had been asked to provide a third-party review of what was purported to be (Turnagain’s) 95% design. Guys, you don’t get to a 95% design and then find out you can’t afford it.” 

Wallis followed by saying he couldn’t speak to exactly what went wrong with Turnagain’s process, but said he believed his firm could “rightsize any of these options for your scope, schedule and budget.”

One thing that is certain is all three designs will result in downsizing of the existing dock face. Wallis said at the meeting that the existing sections of the dock not covered by the new footprint would have to be demolished. 

“We can’t leave the cells there,” Wallis told officials. “If we leave the cells there, they’ll eventually collapse and the contents will spill out and that’s an uncontrolled failure.” 

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