Timeline

2019

CHI Franciscan is sued for $5.5 million by nurse Hana Etcheverry on behalf of 7,000 employees of Harrison hospital in Bremerton who were not getting compensated for interrupted lunches and breaks and pre- and post-shift work.

2020

St. Michael Medical Center opens in Silverdale, costing CHI Franciscan $500 million for the 500,000-square foot facility.

2021

St. Michael had to temporarily close its emergency room at the Bremerton campus due to staffing shortages. Patients were diverted to the one in Silverdale or to St. Anthony Hospital in Gig Harbor.

Oct. 13, 2022

CommonSpirit Health, which owns St. Michael, announced that a nationwide outage of electronic health records was the result of a ransomware attack. St. Michael was unable to access medical history of patients on its computer systems. It also caused issues with x-ray and MRI readings, among other complications. MyChart was unavailable so patients couldn’t look at their own medical records. It led to mass cancellations of appointments and delays in critical medical procedures. The problem wasn’t solved for a few weeks.

Nov. 2

A number of local fire chiefs spoke to the Kitsap County commissioners about problems at St. Michael. Chad Melton, president of St. Michael’s, said they are working with a task force that includes some of the chiefs on these very issues. Fire chiefs said they would like better communication on how long the backups are at St. Michael so patients could be diverted elsewhere if need be. Melton said they have been diverting patients.

Nov. 3

The St. Michael hospital union calls for removal of president Chad Melton at a community meeting in Silverdale. A main reason was backups at the emergency room causing patients to have to wait hours before receiving treatment. Fire department ambulances have had to wait for up to six hours, so they’ve been unable to get back to their communities for service. Not hiring enough people and being unable to retain staff were other issues.