A Healthy Move for a Hospital

No more bouncing from chain to chain for the Ojai Valley Community Hospital. It soon will be owned by the people it serves: the Ojai Valley community. That will keep it from being closed, as had been contemplated by the Tennessee-based chain that is the 40-year-old hospital’s fourth owner since 1987. And thanks to a shift to nonprofit status, it should have a healthy long-term prognosis.

This is an outstanding example of residents organizing to take back local control of an important community institution.

Department store owner Alan Rains heads a group of local physicians and community leaders called the Ojai Valley Community Hospital Foundation, which has struck a deal to purchase the 110-bed facility from Province Healthcare Inc. Becoming nonprofit should save enough money in property taxes to pay the cost of meeting stiff earthquake-retrofit standards that begin to take effect next year. It will also make the hospital eligible to receive tax-deductible donations.

The 35,000 people who live in the Ojai Valley are more dependent on their hometown hospital than most Ventura County residents. Without it, people in need of emergency medical care would be about 30 minutes over two-lane mountain roads from the nearest help in Ventura or Santa Paula.

A decade of staggering changes in the health-care industry has created a harsh new reality for community hospitals. Dozens have closed statewide as large regional hospitals have siphoned off patients by reshaping themselves as specialty centers and cutting their rates to grab health maintenance organization contracts.

Ojai Valley Community Hospital has stayed open by dedicating 66 of its 110 beds to skilled nursing care and by ending obstetric care this year. Built in 1960, the hospital sees 500 to 600 patients a month at a 24-hour emergency room, uses 23 doctors and is the third-largest employer in the valley with 280 workers. As things are, the hospital makes just $300,000 to $400,000 a year on a budget of $15 million, records show.

But with the new earthquake standards looming, necessitating an estimated $3.3 million in strengthening, a Province Healthcare executive said 18 months ago that the hospital might have to close. The new owners have identified ways to reduce the cost of that seismic work.

Local nonprofit ownership should bring stability and peace of mind to staff and clients alike by replacing frequent corporate turnovers with a board of familiar names and faces. We congratulate the Ojai Valley Community Hospital Foundation for taking the needed action to solve this problem, and we wish the hospital sound fiscal health for the next 40 years.