{"id":835945,"date":"2026-09-04T07:26:20","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T07:26:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/835945\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T07:26:20","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T07:26:20","slug":"san-juan-islands-residents-brave-ferry-lines-medevacs-to-get-to-the-doctor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/835945\/","title":{"rendered":"San Juan Islands residents brave ferry lines, medevacs to get to the doctor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bonnie Oak Boesky has lived in the San Juan Islands for more than 40 years, since she was in her early 20s. She raised her four children there.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s like a chance to live in paradise for most of your life,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

But the idyllic surroundings come at a cost, which became apparent when Boesky\u2019s twins were small children and had both asthma and severe allergies.<\/p>\n

Getting health care in the San Juan Islands can be tough for residents. There\u2019s a body of water between them and any hospital or specialists they might need. Because of the challenges of getting to the mainland, residents say they sometimes delay care until it\u2019s an emergency.<\/p>\n

Boesky said whenever one of her twins had a cold, she would follow them around with a stethoscope to make sure their breathing was OK.<\/p>\n

\u201cI not-jokingly said that we were on code yellow all the time,\u201d Boesky said.<\/p>\n

Once, one of her children got a full-body rash, and the doctor on the island had her flown to a hospital in Bellingham.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a very stormy night,\u201d Boesky said, too stormy for a fixed-wing plane, and the helicopter didn\u2019t have space for an extra person \u2014 that is, no room for a parent.<\/p>\n

It was the middle of the night, Boesky said, \u201cAnd here’s our daughter, who’s middle-school age, being flown off to the hospital by herself.\u201d<\/p>\n

While her daughter was on the plane, Boesky had to rush to the ferry to get to Bellingham as fast as she could.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was frantic,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t think that there\u2019s a solution for that. That\u2019s the reality of living on an island.\u201d<\/p>\n

Residents shared all kinds of stories: rushing to the ferry for suspected appendicitis, for possible sepsis; a man who died of a heart attack because the weather was too wild even for a helicopter.<\/p>\n

One resident said she has three different insurance plans to cover different medevac flight companies, because you never know what plane will be available in an emergency.<\/p>\n

Ferry wait times can stretch from a couple hours to more than six, sometimes due to cancellations, or because every boat is full and people have to wait for the next one. There\u2019s a reservation system, but that doesn\u2019t work for a surprise illness.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why the ferries have a formal priority boarding process for people with urgent health problems. On an average day, about 20 to 25 people use that process at the Orcas Island terminal alone.<\/p>\n

Zale Noah, with Washington State Ferries, said the medical priority system was put in place about 20 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 1998, there actually was an issue with a woman who had a tumor, and unfortunately she was in line for four hours,\u201d Noah said.<\/p>\n

The woman lay in agony in her van\u2019s backseat and died soon after.<\/a><\/p>\n

Over the years, the system has become more formalized, so people won\u2019t abuse it to skip the line. To be eligible, people must have a serious medical condition that could risk their health if they\u2019re left waiting in a ferry line for too long.<\/p>\n

Priority boarding is not for getting to regular doctor\u2019s appointments.<\/p>\n

In that situation, resident Annie McIntyre said, \u201cYou go the night before, get a hotel room.\u201d<\/p>\n

McIntyre has had a lot of medical appointments in recent months, as doctors monitor a growth on her kidney they\u2019re worried could be cancer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThankfully, I’m able to afford a hotel room if I need it, but there are people that can’t,\u201d McIntyre said. \u201cThere’s people that have to spend the night in their cars.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Jennifer Simpson-Manske, a family medicine specialist on Orcas Island, said sometimes people miss their appointments entirely.<\/p>\n

\"Dr.<\/p>\n

KUOW Photo\/Eil\u00eds O’Neill<\/p>\n

Dr. Jennifer Simpson-Manske, a family medicine specialist, poses on Orcas Island, where she sees patients. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe delays can go on and on and on,\u201d Simpson-Manske said. \u201cI’ve seen them go on for months.\u201d<\/p>\n

Simpson-Manske said she\u2019s seen lots of cases \u2014 like diagnostic mammograms for breast lumps \u2014 where her patients really need to get off the island but don\u2019t qualify for priority boarding.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll these little things can add up to folks who might have cancer who feel like there’s too many obstacles to try to get off the island to even determine if they have cancer,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

When people wait too long for care, they can end up needing a medical evacuation by airplane or helicopter.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot being able to access the ferry system for medical care pushes more people to fly off the island because they wait instead of getting timely care,\u201d Simpson-Manske said.<\/p>\n

Her background is in public health, largely in New Mexico. She said she thought access to health care would be better in the San Juans \u2014 but it\u2019s more similar to rural New Mexico than she expected.<\/p>\n

Solutions have been proposed along the way, like allowing residents to use the ferry system to get to medical appointments, or hiring more medical staff for island clinics.<\/p>\n

But residents say some of the problems \u2014 like having medical emergencies when there\u2019s a body of water between you and a hospital \u2014 don\u2019t have a solution. They\u2019re just part of life on an island.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality is we do live on an island,\u201d Bonnie Oak Boesky said, \u201cand I think everybody who lives here knows that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Visitors and dreamers wonder: How do you get health care in this wild and beautiful place? The answer is: Sometimes, you can\u2019t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bonnie Oak Boesky has lived in the San Juan Islands for more than 40 years, since she was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":835946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":["post-835945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=835945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/835946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=835945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=835945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=835945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}