Backers of New Clinic Put Focus on Damage

A citizens group backing construction of a new $51-million outpatient clinic at Ventura County Medical Center held a news conference Monday in front of a condemned building to dramatize the need for a new facility.

The media event was the opening salvo of the campaign leading up to a March 26 countywide referendum in which voters will decide the fate of the replacement facility, said Pat Weinberger, head of the group called SMART.

Members of SMART--Saving Money as Responsible Taxpayers--held photographs showing leaky roofs and water damage in several now-closed medical buildings.

A doctor and half a dozen patients who use the county clinics also joined the news conference at the medical center. They said the new outpatient wing is needed to fulfill the county’s mandate to serve the poor and the growing number of uninsured in the county.

“If this project goes down, you’re going to have a very weak county medical system and an inability to care for the poor,” said Dr. Lanyard Dial, director of the county’s residency program.

Weinberger noted that 65% of the hospital’s patients are indigent or lack medical insurance.

The March vote will culminate years of wrangling between the county and the private, nonprofit Community Memorial Hospital over the county’s construction plans.

The new five-story outpatient wing would consolidate five clinics now located in leased facilities away from the main county hospital campus.

By housing the clinics under one roof at the hospital site, the county would save an estimated $1 million a year on rent, supporters said.

More than half of the new ambulatory care clinic would be paid for with federal grant money and the rest by hospital revenues, county officials said.

Opponents of the county project, which include neighboring Community Memorial and the group Taxpayers for Quality Health Care, say an independent study is needed to assess whether the new outpatient wing is necessary.

Community Memorial officials argue that the project could drive the county deeper into debt if the federal government decides to cut health care expenditures. They also argue that the project will ultimately compete for private patients.

County officials maintain that the funding is secure and the project is not intended to lure private patients.

Moreover, Dial said the county hospital’s mission to train badly needed family-practice physicians is jeopardized by the lack of adequate facilities.

Last year’s heavy rains leached asbestos out of the hospital’s Family Practice Center, prompting its condemnation, he said. Half the graduates at the training center end up practicing in the county, and a new facility would ensure that the area would continue to retain these family practitioners, Dial said.

“For the county taxpayer, there is no increase in taxes,” he said. “In fact, [the project] will be spending their money more wisely.”

Several present and former county hospital patients spoke about the importance of an improved county medical facility.

Cancer patient Marcia Brok, 49, of Port Hueneme said the inconvenience of traveling to different clinics located away from the main hospital has merely replaced the leaky, smelly facilities she formerly visited.

“It’s very difficult when my cancer is acting up to go to three different clinics in one day,” she said. “It’s pain, plus inconvenience.”

But Laura Dahlgren, a registered nurse at Community Memorial and chief spokeswoman for Taxpayers for Quality Health Care, said her group simply wants the Board of Supervisors to consider alternatives before spending public money.

“The county has repeatedly refused to do an independent study to look at the entire health care needs of Ventura County,” she said. “We believe there is a possibility that the private sector could assist with [those needs] and the county has refused to look into this.”