MOSES LAKE — Construction plans for the new MRI suite at Samaritan Hospital will have to be revised. Samaritan chief executive officer Teresa Sullivan said the location and cost are under final review.

“We had a little bit of a setback in where we thought we could put the MRI, and the state said no, you can’t put it there,” Sullivan said. Sullivan updated commissioners at the regular meeting March 27.

In other business, Samaritan Clinic director Kyle Kellum updated commissioners on clinic operations.

Samaritan Clinic has experienced an increase in patient visits, Kellum said, and between January 2017 and January 2018 “we jumped significantly.” He used the clinic’s urgent care department as an example; urgent care visits went up by 3,000.

Each department at the hospital and clinic must meet quality targets, he said, and the clinic staff is working on ways to maintain quality as business increases. Part of that effort is periodic meetings of employees in each department to review the data and look for places that need improvement. But it’s important to make sure the meetings don’t become an end in themselves, he said. “Let’s actually try to make something happen.”

He cited the case of patients that make an appointment but don’t keep it (called the no-show rate) as an example. About 13 percent of patients weren’t keeping appointments in January 2017; it had been cut to 9.6 percent by February 2018. Kellum said the clinic staff looked at the data and discussed different strategies. In the end the clinic changed the way patients are contacted before an appointment.

The no-show rate has dropped, but it’s not meeting the standard set by clinic and hospital officials, Kellum said. Commissioner Dale Paris asked why patients are missing appointments. Kellum said in the case of family medicine and pediatrics, if patients have to wait a few days to get their kids in, the kids might get better. Or patients forget if the appointment is scheduled too far in advance.

Commissioner Alan White asked if provision is made for patients who need to be seen that day. Kellum said it is, but they fill up quickly. In that case, patients are urged to go to urgent care, he said. The urgent care department is open until 7 p.m.

White asked if hospital officials had given any thought to extending the day of other departments past 5 p.m. “Is there a need for that?” he asked.

Kellum said there are some other clinic operations that need to be addressed first, then clinic hours will be reviewed. However, “at the moment, we need more providers,” Sullivan said, before clinic services can be increased.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at [email protected].