L.C.McCabe
04-17-2007, 10:32 PM
Summary of the Board of Supervisors Meeting
Rita Scardaci, Director of Health Services opened the testimony followed by another woman, (I did not catch her name.) They were followed by Elinor Hall and Lucy Johns who were hired as outside consultants to analyze the impacts of the proposed transfer of hospital care from Sutter to Memorial Hospital. The full report can be found here:
https://www.sonoma-county.org/health/admin/pdf/FinalHospitalTransactionStudy_4_11_07.pdf
Their recommendations to the Board of Supervisors is that Sutter should not be allowed to close the Chanate facility until all the proposed build out of Memorial is completed, and that won't be until 2009 at the earliest. Otherwise, we will have a shortage of necessary hospital beds to meet the health care needs of our community.
They also felt that the expansion plans were inadequate in regards to adult ICU, neonatal ICU as well as maternity beds.
The inability for Memorial Hospital to provide adequate reproductive services for women was highlighted with the statistics that last year Sutter performed 175 tubal ligations after caesarian section as well as 62 abortions provided under general anesthesia. It was suggested that some of the women might have been able to avail themselves of local anesthetics at an outpatient clinic, but that many others would need general anesthesia due to health care necessity. Since Memorial is bound by the directives of the Catholic church, they will be unable to provide those medical services.
Another sticky issue was the continuation of the physician residency program. There has been talk of a consortium of health care providers who would step in to fulfill those needs. However, the consultants said that any alteration to the current residency program will necessitate it being resubmitted for accreditation. Those details are not finalized at this time, and the average waiting period for review and approval by the accrediting agency is 12 months.
Supervisor Kelley tried to delve into that issue further and asked whether or not there could be “a gap” in the availability of the residency program. That was met with a negative response because it is imperative that there be continuity and that interns and residents work together as a team. You cannot have a year when it is not available. That alone seemed to shoot down Sutter's goal of shuttering the Chanate campus in January 2008.
Mike Cohill from Sutter and George Perez from Memorial spoke briefly to basically say that they were still negotiating and making good progress. They provided no new details.
Cohill did say that Sutter was committed the health and well being of Sonoma County. Implying that if they needed to stay open a little longer, they’d do that.
Supervisor Tim Smith spoke and he barely contained his anger at Sutter. He said that he was tired of their stalling as well as the incomplete and inadequate information provided. He then said he saw no reason to vote to change the contract with Sutter regarding the Health Care Access Agreement unless it was something better than what we had now. Basically unless they come up with something better, he will vote against it.
He gave his historical perspective since he had been on the board in 1995-6 when Sutter was selected to enter into the agreement with the county. In retrospect he said that the county should have at that time had a broad ranging community-based discussion looking at health care delivery throughout the county. Something that has only now begun to happen with the district hospitals banding together forming a Joint Powers Agreement.
Supervisor Reilly concurred with Smith. Then he turned to county counsel and asked about the contractual agreements involved and what was in the process the county would have to embark upon should it decide to enforce Sutter to live up their end of the bargain. The lawyer replied that there is a process of “meet and confer” which could be followed by a mediator. However, to preserve their legal rights they could initiate a court case while they began the “meet and confer” process.
Reilly suggested that this is what the Board should recommend for staff to pursue.
Supervisor Mike Kerns agreed with Reilly on the issue.
Chair Valerie Brown felt that there shouldn’t be a vote until after public testimony was taken.
At that point representatives from various groups spoke about different aspects of health care in our community. There were many people who wore stickers saying $587M which indicated that last year Sutter Health posted a profit of $587 million dollars in California.
Dan Smith, the man who donated $2 million to keep Palm Drive Hospital from closing, testified and tried shaming Mike Cohill for working for a large corporation whose parent company was flush with cash and feeling badly since the Santa Rosa campus was losing money.
Later the chief of staff of Palm Drive brought up the issue of mental health and said that our county had mental health needs that are not being served. She chastised Sutter’s plans to close the adult inpatient mental health facility when we currently do not have enough beds to meet our needs. The lack of any pediatric/adolescent mental health facility was also mentioned, and she specifically mentioned the recent deaths due to police shootings of people who would have benefited from mental health care that they did not receive.
After all the public testimony was concluded the Board voted unanimously to accept the preliminary study prepared by the Department of Health Services’ independent consultants.
A lawyer from a San Francisco firm was then called and asked some questions regarding the Health Care Access Agreement. He brought up another point regarding Sutter’s obligation to build a new hospital and that the county had approved that plan in 2004. He said that any transference of the HCAA to Memorial would also then include the building of a new hospital. Another rub was that the 2004 agreement extended the contract life with Sutter for another five years. Therefore we are no longer talking about a twenty year lease that is due to expire in 2016, but a twenty-five year lease that will expire in 2021. He agreed that a “meet and confer” was the first step, and that if the contract were taken to court for enforcement that it would be filed in the Sonoma County Superior Court.
Then the Board took a vote on Supervisor Reilly’s proposal to instruct staff to initiate those legal proceedings. It was unanimous.
This will now be on the agenda again on April 24th.
Let the games begin.
-
Linda McCabe
https://lcmccabe.blogspot.com
Rita Scardaci, Director of Health Services opened the testimony followed by another woman, (I did not catch her name.) They were followed by Elinor Hall and Lucy Johns who were hired as outside consultants to analyze the impacts of the proposed transfer of hospital care from Sutter to Memorial Hospital. The full report can be found here:
https://www.sonoma-county.org/health/admin/pdf/FinalHospitalTransactionStudy_4_11_07.pdf
Their recommendations to the Board of Supervisors is that Sutter should not be allowed to close the Chanate facility until all the proposed build out of Memorial is completed, and that won't be until 2009 at the earliest. Otherwise, we will have a shortage of necessary hospital beds to meet the health care needs of our community.
They also felt that the expansion plans were inadequate in regards to adult ICU, neonatal ICU as well as maternity beds.
The inability for Memorial Hospital to provide adequate reproductive services for women was highlighted with the statistics that last year Sutter performed 175 tubal ligations after caesarian section as well as 62 abortions provided under general anesthesia. It was suggested that some of the women might have been able to avail themselves of local anesthetics at an outpatient clinic, but that many others would need general anesthesia due to health care necessity. Since Memorial is bound by the directives of the Catholic church, they will be unable to provide those medical services.
Another sticky issue was the continuation of the physician residency program. There has been talk of a consortium of health care providers who would step in to fulfill those needs. However, the consultants said that any alteration to the current residency program will necessitate it being resubmitted for accreditation. Those details are not finalized at this time, and the average waiting period for review and approval by the accrediting agency is 12 months.
Supervisor Kelley tried to delve into that issue further and asked whether or not there could be “a gap” in the availability of the residency program. That was met with a negative response because it is imperative that there be continuity and that interns and residents work together as a team. You cannot have a year when it is not available. That alone seemed to shoot down Sutter's goal of shuttering the Chanate campus in January 2008.
Mike Cohill from Sutter and George Perez from Memorial spoke briefly to basically say that they were still negotiating and making good progress. They provided no new details.
Cohill did say that Sutter was committed the health and well being of Sonoma County. Implying that if they needed to stay open a little longer, they’d do that.
Supervisor Tim Smith spoke and he barely contained his anger at Sutter. He said that he was tired of their stalling as well as the incomplete and inadequate information provided. He then said he saw no reason to vote to change the contract with Sutter regarding the Health Care Access Agreement unless it was something better than what we had now. Basically unless they come up with something better, he will vote against it.
He gave his historical perspective since he had been on the board in 1995-6 when Sutter was selected to enter into the agreement with the county. In retrospect he said that the county should have at that time had a broad ranging community-based discussion looking at health care delivery throughout the county. Something that has only now begun to happen with the district hospitals banding together forming a Joint Powers Agreement.
Supervisor Reilly concurred with Smith. Then he turned to county counsel and asked about the contractual agreements involved and what was in the process the county would have to embark upon should it decide to enforce Sutter to live up their end of the bargain. The lawyer replied that there is a process of “meet and confer” which could be followed by a mediator. However, to preserve their legal rights they could initiate a court case while they began the “meet and confer” process.
Reilly suggested that this is what the Board should recommend for staff to pursue.
Supervisor Mike Kerns agreed with Reilly on the issue.
Chair Valerie Brown felt that there shouldn’t be a vote until after public testimony was taken.
At that point representatives from various groups spoke about different aspects of health care in our community. There were many people who wore stickers saying $587M which indicated that last year Sutter Health posted a profit of $587 million dollars in California.
Dan Smith, the man who donated $2 million to keep Palm Drive Hospital from closing, testified and tried shaming Mike Cohill for working for a large corporation whose parent company was flush with cash and feeling badly since the Santa Rosa campus was losing money.
Later the chief of staff of Palm Drive brought up the issue of mental health and said that our county had mental health needs that are not being served. She chastised Sutter’s plans to close the adult inpatient mental health facility when we currently do not have enough beds to meet our needs. The lack of any pediatric/adolescent mental health facility was also mentioned, and she specifically mentioned the recent deaths due to police shootings of people who would have benefited from mental health care that they did not receive.
After all the public testimony was concluded the Board voted unanimously to accept the preliminary study prepared by the Department of Health Services’ independent consultants.
A lawyer from a San Francisco firm was then called and asked some questions regarding the Health Care Access Agreement. He brought up another point regarding Sutter’s obligation to build a new hospital and that the county had approved that plan in 2004. He said that any transference of the HCAA to Memorial would also then include the building of a new hospital. Another rub was that the 2004 agreement extended the contract life with Sutter for another five years. Therefore we are no longer talking about a twenty year lease that is due to expire in 2016, but a twenty-five year lease that will expire in 2021. He agreed that a “meet and confer” was the first step, and that if the contract were taken to court for enforcement that it would be filed in the Sonoma County Superior Court.
Then the Board took a vote on Supervisor Reilly’s proposal to instruct staff to initiate those legal proceedings. It was unanimous.
This will now be on the agenda again on April 24th.
Let the games begin.
-
Linda McCabe
https://lcmccabe.blogspot.com