WENATCHEE, Wash. -- An Eastern Washington medical center is pleading for help fighting a provision in the farm bill approved by the U.S. Senate and now in a House-Senate Conference Committee.

The provision is apparently the result of Congressional concern over specialty hospitals owned by physicians. The concern is that physicians could refer Medicare/Medicaid patients to their own specialty hospitals.

But the bill approved by the Senate would block Medicare/Medicare payments to any hospital or medical center with 40 percent or greater physician ownership.

Wenatchee Valley Medical Center is 100 percent doctor owned.

"We're doing the right thing," said CEO and Chairman of the Board Dr. David Weber. "We see all patients, we are 52 percent Medicare and Medicaid in our demographics and we gave away $3 million in free care last year."

Some 160,000 people come to Wenatchee Valley Hospital and its clinics each year. Fee and charges are below national averages.

Congress is apparently not convinced. The hospital says the Senate bill might even make it impossible to operate the 20-bed hospital in Wenatchee. Those beds include nine for rehabilitation. If they close, patients might be sent to Seattle or Spokane.

But while the problems in Wenatchee may be serious, they would be absolutely catastrophic in Royal City, in Grant County.

Dr. Richard Hourigan is a family practitioner in Royal City and a part-owner of the Wenatchee Valley Center.

"I know where they are coming from," he said. "But they are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We are really a group that put the patients' needs first."

Dr. Hourigan works at one of eight rural clinics operated by Wenatchee Valley Medical Center. If Congress approves the farm bill, the clinic will close.

"We just got this clinic back open," said patient Spud Brown. "It was closed. We just got it back open. Yeah, it would hurt this community."

One reason it hurts: The next clinic is 35 miles away.

"If your child became sick and you had to go to the doctor, it is a three hour adventure into Moses Lake, having them seen by a doctor, then to a pharmacy, and then back," said Royal City resident Anna Singer.

Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell and the two Republican Representatives from Eastern Washington are promising to fight the Medicare/Medicaid amendment to the farm bill. Meanwhile, doctors at the Medical Center say it isn't essential that Congress like them. They just want them to remember the patients.