Santa Paula Hospital Chooses Partner

Santa Paula Memorial Hospital, awash in red ink and struggling to stay open, has pared down its list of potential partners to one. Santa Paula hospital officials said Tuesday that the board of trustees met all day Sunday before settling on a favored partner and a backup in case final negotiations fail with the first choice.

“We accomplished everything we hoped and will be having more specific discussions with a selected organization very soon,” said Carol Burhoe, board treasurer.

Burhoe and other trustees declined to identify the top-ranked health care group, saying only that of the five interested medical organizations, Ventura’s Community Memorial Hospital had bowed out of consideration.

“We’ve narrowed it to the last two choices,” veteran trustee Anita Tate said. “We’re going to try to work with the first choice, and then there’s a backup if that doesn’t work out.”

That has left participants in the process to speculate about which group the trustees favor.

County Supervisor Kathy Long, in whose district the hospital is located, said she thinks that the trustees have decided to try to affiliate with the county hospital system. But she said she had not received confirmation by Tuesday afternoon and expected a notification letter in the next day or so.

“I think it’s a good fit that makes a lot of sense,” Long said. “It will provide access and affordable care to the Santa Clara Valley and keep the doors open so we continue to have emergency capability in that valley.”

But the recently retired administrator of the county hospital, Dr. Samuel Edwards, said that since he has heard nothing from hospital sources he has concluded the county is not the finalist.

“I’ve been around Santa Paula all my professional life, and the people who are usually buzzing are absolutely quiet,” he said. “I think the fact that we haven’t heard anything means we’re not going to get it.”

The 42-year-old Santa Paula hospital, one of just three in California built solely from community donations, is losing $3 million a year and has not turned a profit on operations since 1988.

Officials announced in December that it needed to raise $600,000 in 90 days to avoid possible closure or downsizing. Conditions have improved since then, but officials still say they must affiliate with another medical organization to stay afloat.

If the Santa Paula hospital were to join the county system, it would become part of a medical safety net that serves Ventura County’s poor and uninsured.

Long said residents of the agricultural Santa Clara Valley, with the county’s lowest incomes, already use the county system frequently, driving 15 miles past the Santa Paula medical center to Ventura for hospital treatment. So a partnership would bring hospital care closer to many patients’ homes, Long said.

Long said Santa Paula trustees, proud of their community-hospital tradition, want to remain as independent as possible.

She believes an agreement recognizing that spirit can be reached. Perhaps trustees could sit as a medical advisory committee to the county, she said.

As part of the county system, Santa Paula Memorial Hospital would receive more money per patient from state and federal insurance plans. The hospital could also profit from treating about 450 Santa Clara Valley residents who are county employees and enrolled in a county-run insurance plan, Long said.

At the same time, the county would keep open the only emergency room within easy reach of 50,000 residents in the Piru, Fillmore and Santa Paula areas.

“I expect to get a formal request in the next day or two to put our technical people together and see what format and model we could work out,” Long said.

Five organizations have discussed affiliating with the 39-bed hospital and made presentations to Santa Paula Memorial trustees: Community Memorial, Ventura County Medical Center, Clinicas del Camino Real and representatives of the hospital chains that run St. John’s Regional Medical Center and Simi Valley Hospital.

Roberto Juarez, director of Clinicas del Camino Real, a nonprofit group of seven clinics across the county, said it makes most sense for Santa Paula Memorial to affiliate with his organization. Clinicas could bring perhaps 150 new patients a month to the Santa Paula hospital, he said, including dozens of babies now born to Santa Clara Valley mothers at St. John’s in Oxnard.

“I think we would provide them with the most autonomy and give them some of the patients they need,” he said.

But Juarez said he thinks the county has the inside track. The hospital is “looking for deeper pockets for equipment and building rehab,” he said.

Juarez said it also makes sense for Santa Paula to seriously consider St. John’s, which acquired struggling Pleasant Valley Hospital in the 1990s and has kept it open.

Michael Bakst, executive director at Community Memorial, said Santa Paula Memorial representatives never really seemed interested in his hospital’s overtures.

He said trustees wanted to remain autonomous, but also wanted to get cash from Community Memorial for hospital reconstruction and other projects.

“We heard that their community advisory group was very interested in affiliation with the county, and that was fine with us,” Bakst said.

Indeed, Tate said there is no love lost between Community Memorial and Santa Paula Memorial.

“Some of us saw that they would take over completely and rob us of our personality, our autonomy,” Tate said. “So when they withdrew this time, it did not upset us unduly.”