This community opinion was contributed by George Fendler. The opinions expressed do not necessarily represent BenitoLink or other affiliated contributors. Lea este artículo en español aquí. 

Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital is worth saving. Lets look at other successful California Rural Hospitals.

For a little over three years our county has been struggling to make our healthcare system continue to be viable. The board settled on the notion of selling it to Insight Healthcare from Flint, Michigan. Many of the residents of San Benito County think that is a really bad idea. We have been fighting this transaction tooth and nail! (If you want to express your opinion, participate in the survey at

http://keephazelpublic.org/survey.html ).

I have been struggling with the question of “WHY?” I haven’t come up with an answer. Insight doesn’t meet any of the eight criteria that the board listed at the beginning of their search for a partner.

The CEO and CFO as well as most of the Directors have expressed the opinion that it is impossible for a rural, California hospital to be run successfully. It is an exercise in futility to ask someone to do something that they believe is impossible! I don’t think our current management team is going to be able to operate our hospital successfully. They don’t think they can. And, they have decided to sell it to someone that they think can do a better job. The problem with that is they have chosen to sell every part of our county’s healthcare infrastructure to a company that has tried to take over other hospitals and have not had even one long-term success.

It is true that there have been many rural hospital failures in recent years. Having a global pandemic certainly didn’t help matters. But our board is looking at the hospitals that failed and copying what many of them did. If we follow the example of hospitals that failed, what are the odds of success?

Here is an idea. Lets look at successful rural hospitals In California. A few that I found with a simple Internet search are:

Sutter Amador Hospital, Jackson, pop. 5,100 Amador county pop. 42,000.

The 52-bed community-based, not-for-profit Sutter Amador Hospital serves a population of about 40,000 in California’s Gold Country. It is the fifth year in a row that Sutter Amador has been named to The Chartis Center’s prestigious list.

Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital Grass Valley, pop. 14,000 Nevada county pop 102,000.

One of 6 hospitals operated by Dignity Health in the Sacramento area.

St. Elizabeth Community Hospital, Red Bluff, pop. 14,400 Tehama county pop 65,000.

Operated by Dignity Health.

With the November election, we put two new directors on the board and the board now has a new president. I would like to propose that the new board start over on their search for a partner.

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