The news was difficult to swallow and hard to break to customers, according to Anita Gerstmann, a volunteer at Grannies’ Attic in Puyallup .
For more than two decades, the nonprofit store has been more than the best thrift shop in town , Gerstmann said. It’s been a human connection point — for people who need one.
In April, Gerstmann and the other 60-plus volunteers who staff Grannies’ Attic — nearly all of them local seniors — received word: their beloved shop is being shuttered .
May 31 will be the last day at Grannies’ Attic, unless donations dry up sooner. They stopped accepting them a few weeks back.
Gerstmann, 72, isn’t happy.
Neither are the store’s longtime customers, she said.
“It did not hit well. There’s been a lot of tears, a lot of emotion and a lot of, ‘Why is this happening?’” said Gerstmann, a Puyallup resident who has volunteered at Grannies’ Attic for the last seven years and spent 36 working for MultiCare prior to retirement.
“For myself and pretty much everybody else who volunteers, it’s a way to give back,” Gerstmann said of her time at Grannies’ Attic.
“Along with that came the camaraderie and the making of new friends, just getting out of the house.”
There’s good reason for the anger and confusion Gerstmann described:
No matter where you stand politically — or who you blame — there’s little question the nation’s health-care system is broken beyond repair, and the sudden closure of Grannies’ Attic is the latest reminder.
What does the demise of a scrappy thrift store run by seniors in Puyallup reveal about our current state of health-care decay?
Plenty, I’d suggest.
Grannies’ Attic has operated under MultiCare’s Celebrate Seniority outreach program , designed to promote healthy, active aging for people 55 and older. That’s where the crew of five dozen volunteers comes in. The store exists primarily to raise money for nearby Good Samaritan Hospital , just up the hill.
According to spokesperson Scott Thompson, MultiCare recently decided to cut the cord on Grannies’ Attic and the Celebrate Seniority programs.
The locally governed health system is now Washington’s largest, with annual revenue in the billions .
For MultiCare, the decision was financial, Thompson said. It always is.
“MultiCare was losing more than $400,000 a year on Celebrate Seniority and Grannies’ Attic. While that might seem like a small amount in a year’s time, long term, five years and 10 years down the road that amount accumulates to millions of dollars,” Thompson told The News Tribune.
“Celebrate Seniority and Grannies’ have been valuable programs to combat the social isolation of seniors, but when we have many of our hospitals operating with negative margins, we had to make the difficult decision of how best to allocate our resources,” Thompson added.
“We must ensure we have the resources necessary to provide daily patient care at all our facilities.”
‘Clearly not sustainable’
Think about those words for a moment, because they’re terrifying.
MultiCare is an ever-expanding network of providers , with more than 300 locations and 12 hospitals across three states.
Dating back to the founding of Tacoma’s first hospital, today the health system’s local reach is staggering. If you’re scheduled to see a doctor, nurse or health-care professional in Pierce County — or collect a paycheck in the industry — there’s a decent chance MultiCare is involved.
Particularly given MultiCare’s status as a homegrown health-care giant, it’s tempting — and frankly, easy in many cases — to criticize the operation. Between the layoffs , bare-bones cost cutting measures and bare-knuckle reimbursement disputes , the list of legitimate grievances is long and growing — and that’s before considering the infuriating challenge of simply accessing care.
Still, what if we temporarily suspend disbelief, for the sake of a more revealing and helpful analysis? (For my part, I’ll leave it to the online commenters to provide a breakdown of MultiCare executive pay.)
Regardless of how you feel about the local health system — or how, exactly, things went so sideways — the underlying claim is true.
Financially, MultiCare is flailing, and it’s not alone.
In 2022, MultiCare hospitals lost nearly $300 million , Bill Robertson, the health system’s chief executive, told The News Tribune last year, describing a trend he painted as “clearly not sustainable over time.”
According to the Washington State Hospital Association, hospitals across the state lost $1.74 billion in 2023 .
The reasons are many. Labor is short and costs have soared. Inflation jacked up prices. ERs are full of people with nowhere else to go. Medicaid reimbursement rates don’t cover the cost of care, which is often exorbitant. Hospitals are full of people who don’t need to be there but are often difficult (if not impossible) to discharge. Then Covid made everything 10 times worse.
According to Thompson, there is some good news in all this.
Some Celebrate Seniority programs will continue, he told The News Tribune; two are tied to grant funding.
Meanwhile, MultiCare is “working with … volunteers to find other opportunities,” Thompson said.
‘Something wrong with this picture’
Gretchen Herris, 77, is another Grannies’ Attic volunteer I met this week. The retired medical technologist has lived in Puyallup since 2006 and worked at the thrift store for nearly as long.
Asked about the thrift store’s closure, Herris — who also serves as president of Good Samaritan’s auxiliary, a volunteer group that raises money for the hospital — expressed strong opinions about the root of the problem.
Safe to say, Herris and I disagree about plenty. Where I see rampant profiteering and the consequences of free-market capitalism combined with medicine, she chalked up MultiCare’s duress — and the closure of Grannies’ Attic — mostly to blatant government overreach.
One point we agree on?
“Our medical system has broken down so badly,” Herris said. “There’s something wrong with this picture.”
There certainly is.
Grannies’ Attic is the latest victim.
“I think I’ve come to terms with what the inevitable is,” said Anita Gerstmann, despondence in her voice.
“I’ve moved to more of an acceptance frame of mind,” she added.
“But there are a lot of volunteers who are still very sad and still trying to work through the inevitability of the store closing at the end of month.”
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