Olympic Peninsula Community Clinic (OPCC) told the Board of County Commissioners on Sept. 15 that 2024 was a “really good year” for clinic activity and that it has expanded county-wide outreach, reopened dental services, and added staffing and services on the West End (Forks and Clallam Bay).

“Over the 2024, we had almost 14,000 encounters and almost 2,500 patients,” Helen Kerr, OPCC chief operating officer, said in the work session. She said 71% of encounters were field based and that OPCC’s outreach teams now do countywide transports to detox and inpatient treatment. OPCC reported 132 out-of-county transports in 2024 and already about 200 such transports in 2025.

Kerr described the clinic’s co-response arrangement with Port Angeles Police Department, Clallam County Sheriff’s Office, Forks Police Department and other regional partners, in which peer specialists or behavioral-health ARNPs ride with officers to 911 calls that have behavioral-health elements. She said the co-response model helps divert people from arrest by providing de-escalation and on-the-spot linkage to services.

The clinic also described a jail-based MOUD (medications for opioid-use disorder) program that was started in 2023; staff said participants who completed the program have shown reduced recidivism and no fatal overdoses in that participant pool. OPCC staff said medical respite and other services are serving a growth in older unhoused patients, and they are exploring billing pathways to sustain medical-respite care beyond grant support.

County staff said the county received a WAFIC grant for mental-health response and intends to subcontract OPCC to deliver co-response and outreach services under that contract. Because OPCC already operates the program, staff proposed awarding the contract without an RFP and bringing the subcontract and a waiver of RFP requirements to the board at its regular meeting Tuesday.

The commissioners praised OPCC’s data collection and said they wanted continued reporting on outcomes, including transports, MOUD enrollment, connection-to-services rates and medical-respite numbers.

Next steps: county staff will place a subcontract and a waiver-of-RFP request on the board’s regular meeting agenda for approval.