MOSES LAKE — A new hospital opened in Quincy; construction was mostly completed on the new Samaritan Hospital in Moses Lake. Columbia Basin Hospital voters rejected a request for a construction bond. Columbia Basin health care organizations experienced ups and downs in 2025. 

Quincy Valley Medical Center Chief Executive Officer Glenda Bishop said the new hospital, which opened in May, is being used by more patients.  

“We were in the new building for seven months in 2025 and experienced encouraging increases in volume,” Bishop wrote in response to an email from the Columbia Basin Herald. “From outpatient departments such as our wound care and physical therapy lines, and our rural health – primary care – clinic to the 24/7 emergency department, numbers were up anywhere from 8 to 10% and as high as 34%.” 

The new QVMC opened May 21 after about 18 months of construction. Hospital district voters approved a $55 million bond in 2022 to pay for the project. At an open house May 14, then-hospital commission chair Randy Zolman said that support was crucial. 

“I’d like to thank you, the voters, because without you, this dream would never have happened,” Zolman said. “It’s been a wonderful ride getting to this point; it’s been roughly eight years in the making.” 

Samaritan Healthcare officials received a temporary certificate of occupancy for the new hospital in early December. The new hospital is projected to open for patient care in early March. 

Total project cost is about $225 million, paid for, in part, with a $130 million construction bond approved by district voters and a package of US Department of Agriculture loans. The project is still within its budget as of early January. 

The new hospital will have 50 beds, just like the existing hospital, but is bigger than the existing facility and will be able to offer more services as a result. That means more staff. Staffing has been a consistent challenge for all health care organizations, including Samaritan, a challenge that got worse during the COVID-19 pandemic. Chief Administrative Officer Alex Town said the temporary manpower situation at Samaritan is improving.  

“It’s come down tremendously, and we hope that it continues to go down,” he said. 

Samaritan Chief Executive Officer Theresa Sullivan said finding qualified employees is a challenge nationwide.  

“We’ve been able to hire a lot of people. The biggest area that we still have temporary manpower is in our mother-baby unit, and that is a national issue,” Sullivan said in September. “We have plans in place that we’re able to decrease it.”’ 

Columbia Basin Hospital District voters in Ephrata rejected a $30 million bond request, turning it down in August and November. If it had passed, the bond would’ve paid for expansion of the CBH clinic, added a new retail pharmacy and upgraded the lobby, among other projects.  

Chief Executive Officer Rosalina Kibby said in an earlier interview that hospital officials would keep working on some of the projects that would’ve been funded by the bond. 

“It’s just going to take longer to get to where we need to be,” Kibby said. 

Getting paid for the services they provide has been a challenge for all health care organizations, and Town said it will continue to be an issue. A lot of patients depend on publicly funded insurance programs, Medicaid and Medicare, for insurance, which ultimately means the state and federal government are paying the bill. In most cases, Medicaid reimbursement is under the cost of providing care. 

“Funding goes up and funding goes down,” Town said. “They'll let some hospitals close, but there are critical hospitals in the nation that they know they have to have in place. I think what they're trying to figure out is, where is that line to say, ‘We've (underfunded health care organizations), and they aren't making it, and we got to help them out.’ Honestly, I feel that's the history of health care. Between the (federal) government and the state governments (trying to determine), ‘Where can we push them to the point where they can survive and not have them close?’” 

Bad debt and charity care expenses have increased over time. Confluence Health Chief Financial Officer Janette Townsend said in an earlier interview that it’s gone up significantly. 

“Both bad debt and charity care have gone up in the last few years,” Townsend said. “Bad debt has increased 214% and charity care has increased 63% from 2023 to 2025.” 

    Removing the coverings over the signs was the final step to opening the new Quincy Valley Medical Center in May 2025.