Hospital to Close Amid Anger, Hope

As Santa Paula Memorial Hospital prepares to end 42 years as the Santa Clara Valley’s medical lifeline today, frustrated city and county officials are placing blame, but also vowing to bring the tiny medical center back to life or replace it with a scaled-back new facility.

“What’s left out of this whole equation are the people, the 1,100 who were taken by ambulance to the Santa Paula hospital emergency room last year,” said Ventura County Supervisor John Flynn. “And what bothers me more than anything is that we haven’t done a damned thing about it.”

Flynn’s comments reflect a frustration common among the 50,000 residents of the river valley who have relied on the tiny hilltop medical center since 1961 to deliver their babies, mend their bones and pull them through life-and-death situations.

About 15,000 patients a year, including about 1,100 taken there by ambulance, are treated in the hospital’s emergency room alone. But the entire facility will shut down at noon today for at least six months, and perhaps forever, when the state suspends its operating license because of staff shortages resulting from a huge debt.

Frustration boiled over this week after hospital and Ventura County negotiators postponed a key meeting to discuss a deal to absorb the failing medical center into the county’s health-care system.

The delay, until at least the first week of January, temporarily halted movement toward reopening the only emergency room between Santa Clarita and Ventura and hopes of restoring full hospital services by summer.

It was the latest delay during six months of sputtering negotiations. And it infuriated city officials in Santa Paula and Fillmore. “There seems to be a lot more talking about what we can’t do than what we can do,” said Santa Paula Councilwoman Mary Ann Krause.

So the cities spent Wednesday and Thursday talking with county officials and representatives of several local hospitals to see what, if anything, could be done quickly to fill the void.

“We’re enormously frustrated,” said Wally Bobkiewicz, city manager in Santa Paula.

Santa Paula and Fillmore officials are discussing whether the cities could float bonds and use redevelopment taxes to build their own hospital along busy California 126 to replace the aging, inconvenient hospital, Bobkiewicz said.

“I think it’s possible,” he said. “That’s the purpose of reaching out to other hospitals to determine their interest.”

For their part, Santa Paula hospital trustees and county officials still say they think they can cut a deal to reopen the facility -- if only the other side would fully cooperate -- and if the numbers pencil out.

Discussions broke for a month in November amid finger-pointing: The hospital accused the county of failing to negotiate in good faith, and the county said the hospital had refused to provide basic financial information needed to proceed.

Indeed, this week’s delay came after chief county negotiator Pierre Durand, the county’s health-care director, asked trustees for more documents: audits for March 31 to Nov. 30, additional employee pension obligation information and a written proposal that would cede control of the entire 25-acre hospital site to the county, not just the seven acres on which the hospital sits.

Dumbfounded, the trustees postponed the meeting, saying no real negotiations were likely to occur.

But county Supervisor Kathy Long, in whose district the hospital is located, said she still thought there was “a good, solid opportunity here -- something that’s financially balanced for both sides. It’s just a matter of agreeing on the numbers and getting beyond the relationship challenges.”

Those “relationship challenges” focus on Durand, whom several city and hospital officials have accused of slowing the talks.

Negotiations deteriorated to such a point two weeks ago that Councilwoman Krause asked that Durand be removed as the county’s lead negotiator, and hospital trustee Rodney Fernandez asked that county chief administrator Johnny Johnston be added to the county team to break the deadlock.

Krause, who attended a negotiating session as a city mediator, said she became convinced that Durand, a tough negotiator, was an obstacle.

“I felt that Pierre was focused on areas of disagreement, instead of areas of agreement,” she said. “He wanted different parts of the negotiations to be done sequentially, instead of running on parallel tracks, and that prolonged the negotiations.

“Hypothetical scenarios were being thrown out, such as: If these conditions were met, would that be acceptable to you?” Krause added. “And rather than answering the question, Pierre would say: ‘I don’t think those conditions can be met.’ There’s no room in Pierre’s mind for hypothetical, which I believe is why a lot of the deal points of the negotiations really haven’t even been discussed.”

Durand could not be reached for comment.

But Supervisor Long said Durand was a tough but respected negotiator who helped save the county’s hospital system in the 1980s. And former county hospital administrator Dr. Samuel Edwards, who assisted Durand in the talks, said the health-care chief was committed to reaching agreement if it made sense financially.

“Pierre is passionately desirous of finding some sort of solution to keep a hospital in this valley,” said Edwards, a Santa Paula resident. “If the private sector isn’t able to do it, the county is going to have to support something, because it has a mandate to support medical care for indigents here.”

Durand has been directed by the Board of Supervisors, however, not to risk taxpayers’ money, Edwards said. The hospital has acknowledged debts of $8 million, while its real estate has been appraised at $15 million. But county officials have said the debt could be $11 million or more.

“There’s been a lot of acrimony back and forth about that,” Edwards said.

“Pierre’s job is to be a fierce pragmatist.... But if it’s doable, the county will do it.”

Long said the county has had to be tough during negotiations because, in this statewide budget crisis, there is not a taxpayer dollar to spare.

And there is a precarious financial balance that must be met for the deal to be workable, she said: The county must be able to earn enough money at the hospital to make lease payments to the hospital large enough to pay off its debts. If the debts are too great, the deal can’t work.

And the county still wants it to, she said. Before the next negotiating session in early January, the county will analyze new documents turned over by the hospital, she said, so talks can accelerate.

Not everyone is buying that explanation. Dr. Logan Bundy, head of the hospital’s emergency room and a negotiator, said Thursday: “I am really upset with those people. I am disappointed with their attitude. I don’t think they want to go forward and have a hospital here.”

Even if a deal is reached, county officials have said, it would take at least another six months to gain state approvals to reopen the facility.

Meanwhile, emergency patients must travel an extra 20 minutes to hospitals in Ventura.