A regional medical provider in Pierce County has closed its women’s health clinic, part of the continuing fallout from upheaval in its family-medicine residency program.
In February, The News Tribune reported on the anticipated loss of Community Health Care’s family-medicine residency program after CHC announced that St. Joseph Medical Center was ending its affiliation with the program as of July 1.
Tacoma-based MultiCare health system eventually picked up the program’s six remaining third-year residents.
The leader of the residency program now says repercussions from the residency situation has affected its women’s health services.
Officials with CHC began alerting affected patients over the summer that it was shutting down its Women’s Health Clinic, and the patients would have to seek care elsewhere.
In 2025, CHC provided care to more than 54,000 patients, 6,453 of them seen by residents, according to the nonprofit. At St. Joseph specifically, its providers cared for 1,618 patients, performing 600 labor and deliveries in addition to postpartum evaluations and newborn examinations.
Carri Jo Timmer is the program director and director of medical education for Community Health Care Family Medicine Residency at CHC’s Hilltop Regional Health Center.
Timmer told The News Tribune in response to questions via email in mid-July that the end of the women’s health clinic is “a direct result of the residency closing and VMFH declining to help care for our patients.”
VMFH did not offer any comment on the clinic closure when contacted by The News Tribune. The health system referred to its statement from January regarding CHC’s residency program when the system essentially stated it was reallocating resources and staffing “where it is needed most: for our sickest newborns.”
How current situation unfolded
As Timmer explained, CHC has had two obstetrician/gynecologists on staff to cover patients with higher risk OB/GYN care issues. It had a contract with Franciscan Medical Group, part of VMFH, to share call/hospital coverage using the two doctors for round-the-clock coverage of pregnant patients hospitalized at St. Joseph.
In 2025, FMG decided to end the contract, according to Timmer.
“We made a subsequent contract with the OB Hospitalist Group, a hired/contractual entity for VMFH that was mainly based on resident teaching but included call coverage for our OBs,” she wrote.
“When the residency ended, that contract ended,” she wrote. “Neither FMG or OBHG would agree to continuing call coverage with our OBs at VMFH without residents.”
“Two OB/GYNs is not sufficient for 24/7/365 call coverage and therefore we cannot provide this level of care anymore,” she added.
As a result, CHC’s women’s health clinic was to shut down completely by the end of July.
Timmer said CHC had been “actively working to transfer all of this clinic’s patients to other OB/GYN offices/practices.”
Transferring such patients has been a challenge.
“All other offices have insufficient room to absorb all of these patients,” Timmer wrote, “and patients may lose care or have a break in care come August 1.”
Timmer said via email in mid-July that St. Joseph Medical Center’s president, Deepak Devasthali, made the decision to not continue a relationship with CHC.
“I thought it would take more time to see the effects of his decision. I was wrong. It is being seen immediately,” she wrote.
Timmer noted that CHC Family Medicine physicians will continue to see low-risk OB patients and deliver babies at St. Joseph.
Community Health Care’s clinic network dates to 1969, with two volunteer clinics established to expand access to healthcare for low-income and underinsured Pierce County residents.
CHC serves as part of a nonprofit network of community-based federally qualified health centers. It provides medical, dental, pharmacy and behavioral health as well as specialty healthcare services.
Its family medicine residency program has graduated 55 board-certified family physicians since its launch in 2014.
VMFH’s public statements about the end of the agreement for the residency-rotation program have remained the same, and the health system offered no additional comment to The News Tribune when asked about CHC’s women’s health clinic closure, or any decisions made by hospital leadership regarding the program.
“What we are increasingly seeing in Pierce County and surrounding areas is a critical need for higher-acuity newborn care close to home,” the health system stated in February. “With limited capacity and bed space at St. Joseph Medical Center and our Level III NICU, we must ensure we are dedicating these resources to our most vulnerable patients.”
VMFH in February noted it still had another family-medicine residency program in Kitsap County, the only such program left in its network of 10 hospitals and health care sites that span Kitsap, Pierce, King and Snohomish counties.
Questions remain over what happens to the high-risk patients who would’ve been served by CHC providers.
“Where they thought these patients were going to go, I don’t know,” Timmer told The News Tribune in an interview July 28. “They don’t just disappear. We didn’t create these pregnant patients. We just take care of them.”
Asked if she could see the women’s health clinic reopen in the future, Timmer said she’s still “trying to figure out some way to revitalize the program.”
“It’s tricky to predict the future,” she said at the end of July. “For CHC, if you can’t do inpatient OB, then you can’t do much outpatient OB, and it would be way too expensive for us to hire enough OB/GYNs to create a call group by ourselves.
“Without some sort of partnership with the healthcare systems, with MultiCare or with Virginia Mason, I don’t think we’ll ever be able to bring that back.”
The News Tribune
Debbie Cockrell has been with The News Tribune since 2009. She reports on business and development, local and regional issues.