FOLLOWUP: Ex-clinic in West Seattle Triangle could become new 24/7 clinic
(WSB photo, March 2025)
Fourteen months after Virginia Mason Franciscan Health moved out of 4550 Fauntleroy Way SW in the West Seattle Triangle, a city filing today revealed an early-stage plan for the site’s future. VMFH continued to lease the site even after moving, and ringed it with chain-link fencing, but told us when we last checked that they had nothing to announce about future plans. Now there’s a filing requesting a “zoning analysis” for the building, with this notation elaborating on what’s being considered:
The proposed medical facility development consists of redeveloping the site of the existing building with a new two-story, 11,400 SF free-standing emergency department and urgent care facility.
This facility is outpatient only and primarily provides clinical-related treatment and diagnostic services. It does not operate as a nursing home or hospital and does not offer overnight medical or surgical care. It will be open 24/7 and have ambulance/service access to the building. Services offered within the building on the first floor will include CT, X-ray, Lab, and both emergent and urgent care exams/treatment. The second floor will consist of staff, support, and maintenance areas.
The building will also have 26-27 parking spaces (which is in line with city requirements), direct access to public transportation route, a backup emergency generator with 96-hour run time, direct road access from all three roads along the parcel, and vertical circulation between the ambulance entrance and the two levels will be handled with a patient stretcher sized elevator. Two exit stairs will be included as fire exits with one or both accessing the first floor for staff access.
What the filing doesn’t reveal is who would operate this clinic. The filing is in the name of Fauntleroy Way Properties LLC, with an address in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; the address cross-references to Boldt Health Care Real Estate, a prolific developer in the field whose website notes an unspecified Washington state project. (Further confirming Boldt’s involvement, two names on a document in the file are accompanied by Boldt email addresses.) “Zoning analysis” filings like this one often herald property sales; county files show this site still on record as owned by the Huling Brothers, whose auto-related businesses included one on this site until the mid-2000s. We’ll of course be following up.
Hope this happens, much needed in the community.
It’s wild to see Boldt out here; their main business started in and built much of the city where I went to college.This is a much needed, welcome addition to West Seattle!
Excellent. This would fill a huge need
I live across the street. This would be great!
This would be an incredible add. I’ve never heard of an urgent care + ER combo without an attached hospital. I bet medical billing / coding gets complicated for the staff and patients. If I go to the ER it’s $1,450 ($1000 deductible, $450 copay). If I go to urgent care it’s only $40.
I doubt that this facility will meet the regulatory definition of “emergency room”. More likely, it’ll be an urgent-care that can provide relatively high levels of care. That is, more than just treating sprains and strains, stabilizing acute-onset illnesses, and such.
I recently experienced such a place while on vacation. They repaired some significant facial injuries (checking to make sure they weren’t more serious). Triaged me right into an exam room as soon as I walked (a bit unsteadily) in the door, moved me into an operating theater for my stitches.
Definitely charged my insurance as urgent-care, not hospital-based emergency room.
As I have been transitioning to the ACA market I’ve been reading a lot of medical / insurance posts. Unfortunately I have read of cases where something gets coded as an emergency room level care when a patient went to a hospital with both urgent and ER. I’m hoping it was an edge case or better yet a simple error. I distinctly remember the conversation but not the eventual resolution. As a side note if you ever have an issue like this and can’t get it resolved try contacting the hospitals ombudsman. I remember one billing nightmare case where this worked. You can only attempt an appeal through your insurance so many times for a specific case so best to leave that as a last resort and try to work it out with the service provider directly until you run out of options (but know your deadline to appeal with insurance too)
It’s a private equity firm. PE firms actually buy emergency departments from hospitals. PE owned emergency departments is a dirty business that’s driving up the cost of care while burning out doctors and tanking patient outcomes. Hoping that won’t be the case here but I wouldn’t be optimistic.
ZoomCare runs a similar clinic in Bellevue. Its a great model. And it can’t be considered an ER but can certainly provide similar services.
This sounds very similar to the micro emergency rooms that MultiCare has been building and opening in the South Sound for the past several years.