The 2026 Washington Local Journalism Summit continued with two discussions about rural coverage and government fiscal disclosure.
Report for America Executive Director Kim Kleman moderated the rural coverage discussion with Murrow Fellow Monica Carrillo-Casas at The Spokesman-Review and Spokane Public Radio and healthcare reporter Owen Racer Cascadia Daily News.
Carillo-Casas said access to healthcare in rural communities in Eastern Washington is an issue. She gave an example of the town of Hunter in Stevens County where its population is about 200 people.
“One thing you’ll see is a library, a bar and grill, a few wild turkeys running around, but you won’t find a hospital,” she said. “So for that community specifically, if they are in an emergency or need some help, the closest hospital is about 30 to 40 miles away.”
Kleman asked if Carrillo-Casas’ Spanish fluency has given her more access to people who typically don’t get spoken to by the media. Carrillo-Casas said a lot of her reporting is from Latino communities who don’t get asked how they are dealing with such challenges. She described a series that she covered on Latino farmworkers dealing with long COVID and respiratory problems. In one story, three workers lack health insurance and face a language barrier.
“So for me being able to highlight a story that hasn’t been told before is really crucial,” Carrillo-Casas said.
For Racer, he covers the single hospital system in Whatcom County in northwestern Washington. He said when he started working in Bellingham in July 2025, residents asked him to make “this opaque situation a little bit more transparent.”
Racer gave an example in one of his stories of how private equity staffs the local emergency department, noting that even doctors who had worked with the hospital for a long time told him they “didn’t even know private equity was staffing our emergency department.”
In that story, PeachHealth St. Joseph Medical Center in Bellingham, emergency physicians are employed by TeamHealth, one of the nation’s largest staffing firms for ED physicians. In turn, TeamHealth is owned by the private equity Blackstone Group. Racer highlighted the concerns that corporate ownership can prioritize financial metrics — such as reducing the number of patients who leave before being seen or increasing billable encounters — over clinician autonomy and local decision-making.
According to a 2025 study published in Annals of Internal Medicine, hospitals that had private equity acquisition had an average of 18.2% reduction in ED salaries and 15.9% in ICU salaries.
“Patients in private equity EDs and ICUs experienced a 4.2% and 10.6% increase in transfers, respectively, to other acute care hospitals after acquisition relative to control. On average, ICU length of stay shortened by 0.2 days,” the researchers reported.
Kleman asked if there has been any pushback from anyone. Racer compared his work to reporters in Washington D.C. covering big institutions like the FBI. He said the more he talked to the hospital staff, the more “the top” were “clamping down” on the nurses, doctors and other staff from talking to him.
“But the more you write, the more they talk to you, and the more they clamp down…and it’s like it’s back and forth,” Racer said. “I’ve seen it inside with the hospital administration myself that I’ve reported that I start to hear that they’re trying to prevent that from getting out.”
Racer added that there was no reporter who covered this issue regularly. Instead, Cascadia Daily News in Bellingham shared the work among different staff, including one investigative reporter who was handling multiple stories.
“Once I showed up, we were able to transfer all of that sourcing and work that had been done to me,” Racer said.
Carrillo-Casas shared a more positive experience. She covered a No Kings protest in Kettle Falls, a small town in northeastern Washington, where she was the only reporter present. “They [protesters] were really excited to see me there, and to know that I was doing a story on their area because again, a lot of these areas don’t have a reporter going in and asking those questions,” Carrillo-Casas said.
Looking forward, if an ideal world, there would be at least one healthcare reporter in all of Washington’s 39 counties, said Racer.
Racer suggested collaborative work among healthcare systems countywide in all of Washington’s 39 counties.
“Some of these [private equity] institutions operate in many counties…and tackle them from their headquarters or from a system level,” he said. “And if you could collaborate and really take it from that perspective, rather than only the one hospital.”
Carrillo-Casas, who was nearing the end of her fellowship, said her experience is “bittersweet” and hoped the program will expand coverage in places like Adams County, which has a large agricultural community that often isn’t asked what’s happening locally.