Palm Drive Hospital--No Ifs, Ands, or Buts

Any local can tell that the Palm Drive Heath Care Foundation (not a part of the Palm Drive Hospital District) is determined to reopen Palm Drive as a full service hospital--no ifs, ands, or buts. The ridiculous overkill in the number of Open Our Hospital signs posted around town is a symptom of their fervor to open the hospital regardless of cost, profitability and just plain old common sense. They inflate their projected profits, deflate their expenses and voila: they make an annual operating profit (1% of expenses) in three years time.

In the entire history of Palm Drive Hospital, it never made an operating profit. Only when it borrowed money or received extra income from parcel taxes was the balance sheet in the black. Currently, almost half the parcel tax money goes to making payments to the bond holders. So they are using our taxes to pay back borrowed money. The bonds will be paid off over 20-25 years. Now the District is in bankruptcy for the second time. The District got out of bankruptcy the first time by borrowing millions of dollars (selling bonds) to pay off their debts. This time, they are still paying off the debt from the first bankruptcy. and now, they are an additional $9 million in debt with no way in sight to pay their debts.

The Foundation will rely on charitable contributions of another $9 million to open the hospital and to keep it open for the first couple of years until it will, according to their plans, make a slight profit. What if the Foundation looked at all the alternatives? Would opening up an urgent care center with lab and radiology services be a better alternative? Would using the operating rooms for an outpatient surgical center, and remodeling patient rooms to house alternative medicine, outpatient physical therapy, etc., make more financial sense? We will never know. The Foundation has only one plan--no ifs, ands, or buts.