While most people were home watching “reality TV” last
Wednesday, leaders of Sonoma County’s four small public hospitals
were working on their own real-life “survivor game.”
Faced with the challenge of keeping their emergency rooms and
critical care units open and solvent, the governing boards of the
community hospitals met together to begin talks about sharing
information, employees and services, and to further explore
collective survival strategies.
The five health care district boards agreed to band together to
support favorable legislation in Sacramento and to oppose specific
state budget cuts to local health care programs.
While 22 directors and administrators shared bleak financial
reports and plotted turnaround strategies from the stage, a sparse
public audience of just 38 people attended the well-publicized and
unprecedented meeting at Windsor High School.
“I’m tired of talking about the crisis of health care. I want to
start talking about the vision for health care in Sonoma County,”
said Naomi Fuchs, chair of the Palm Drive Health Care District.
“I believe we have a long list of opportunities we can work on
together,” said Dale Iversen, CEO for Healdsburg District
Hospital.
Iversen listed several ideas, including:
- Sharing the work of the combined 850 employees;
- Help recruit new specialists, primary doctors and nurses;
- Sharing costs and talents of consultants, technicians and
laboratories;
- Enter joint contracts with insurance companies, instead of
individual smaller ones; and,
- Work on “bigger picture” items in Sacramento and Washington,
D.C.
The four small hospitals (Sonoma Valley, Petaluma, Palm Drive
and Healdsburg) share the same experiences of financial losses, too
low reimbursements, nurse shortages and strong threats from the
larger Sutter, St. Josephs and Kaiser hospitals in Santa Rosa In
California where eight out of 10 hospitals lost money last year,
all of Sonoma County’s small hospitals reported financial losses
last year, worsened by the bankruptcy of Health Plan of the
Redwoods in November 2002.
In 2002, Healdsburg and Sonoma Valley lost $2.2 million each;
Palm Drive reported operating losses of $1.9 million and Petaluma
Valley had a loss of $1.4 million.
“Nobody wants to see our emergency rooms close,” said Sonoma
Valley’s Bob Aicher, “especially the bigger hospitals which would
be severely impacted” by the excess patient demand.
“We are all struggling individually,” said Aicher. “Now we need
to struggle together.”
Last week, Healdsburg District Hospital needed a $2.5 million
loan from the Board of Supervisors to keep its doors open.
Only Sonoma Valley Hospital reported any recent financial
improvement and all of the public hospitals would be closed if not
for the recent taxpayer support of successful parcel tax votes.
It’s still not enough, all hospital leaders warned.
Each of the local hospitals are considering new parcel tax
elections in the near future, including the fifth public health
care district in attendance, the Cloverdale ambulance district.
Kurt Hahn, a Healdsburg hospital director, reported on specific
legislative proposals which would improve reimbursements and other
factors for small and public-owned hospitals.
The local health care crisis will hurt the overall local economy
and quality of life which the county government’s economic
development office should address, Hahn challenged. “Health care
has become the number one local issue,” Hahn said.
Hahn also challenged the Santa Rosa Junior College to expand its
nursing program to make room for the 189 applicants who he said
were denied admission last year in a region where all hospitals and
doctors struggle with a trained nursing shortage.
The five districts agreed to explore possible bylaws or a
governance structure to allow more formal meetings in the
future.
“Illness is not a bi-partisan issue. Whether you are a Democrat,
Republican or something else, we all need to fight budget cutbacks
together and save our public hospitals,” said Mike Smith, a Sonoma
Valley director.
Herb Polesky, Chairman of the Healdsburg district served as
moderator and said future working committees and public meetings
will be announced soon.
