Letter: Whidbey Clinic should provide reliable care

Published 1:30 am Sunday, June 7, 2026

Editor,

Reliable primary care on South Whidbey is a serious quality-of-life issue, especially for seniors and vulnerable adults.

My concern is not about one individual provider. It is about a system that too often fails at basic tasks. A routine medication refill should not require repeated portal messages, phone calls and pharmacy requests with no clear response. When the assigned provider or staff member does not answer, there should be a reliable backup path. Patients should not fall into a workflow gap.

We know better organization is possible here. The former Rite Aid pharmacy in Freeland used to be, in my experience, poorly organized: long lines, delayed refill communication and constant frustration. After CVS took over the same location, with many of the same familiar employees, the operation became dramatically more reliable. Same island, same building, many of the same people — different management, different result.

That example matters. It shows this is not simply “island life.” Organization and accountability matter.

WhidbeyHealth Primary Care in Freeland should be expected to provide the same basic reliability: timely communication, backup coverage, and clear procedures for routine but important needs such as medication refills. I do not know whether the problem is at the clinic level or higher up, but years of recurring workflow failures point to management, not geography.

Vulnerable adults with few realistic alternatives should not be left behind.

Gennadiy Bogachkin

Freeland