Rants and Raves of Imperial Valley is a group on Facebook that comments on the good and bad things here. Other areas have the same type of groups. Having watched the February 22, 2024 Imperial Valley Healthcare District, my team and I have chosen to use this rants and raves format to comment on the meeting. First of all, please know that there are more raves than rants about the meeting.
First to the rants.
- Rant to the technical difficulty and delay as a result.
- Rant to the professional from BAE who used a PowerPoint which did not match the handout. He was also unclear and evasive in his presentation.
- Rant that the long-awaited Kaufman-Hall report was pushed to the next meeting
- Rant to confusion about the release of the mediation information.
- Rant that the IVHD webpage is still not operational and no contact information for IVHD board members…
Now to the raves.
- Rave to the new Board for asking hard questions on the BAE study. They saw the same things we previously reported. Additionally, they were able to determine that the study was based on limited information provided as well as disclosure by the BAE representative that Healthcare studies are outside BAE’s normal scope of work. So we now know that the BAE study is useless—which goes to the Rant above.
- Rave to the Board on stating that the management of the new healthcare system should not be limited to UCSD and IVHD board should consider other management companies to include Scripps, Kaiser, Tenet or Sharps to name a few.
- Rave to the information provided on the mediation status with Heffernan CEO committed to bringing the issue to his Board. The IVHD board also asked for ECRMC to provide a status. That leaves only Assemblymember Garcia’s office to agree to disclose the information to the public. Perhaps this will resolve that mystery
- Rave to the individual who stated that a bankruptcy for ECRMC should be placed on the table. A second rave to the IVHD board member who agreed. Rant to ECRMC board president who stated very clearly that was not a consideration due to ECRMC’s concerns for its employees and local vendors.
- Rave to the IVHD board member who indicated that sexual harassment was not acceptable. He cited a situation that had been reported to him. While this Board at this point has no authority over personnel issues, it is good to know that they will uphold the law and require the highest standard and ethics
- Rave to the IVHD board member who indicated the Board should undertake its own feasibility and financial study. While the completion of that study may delay the process, we all need reliable and accurate information.
- Rave to the IVHD board member who rejected financial data with projections for things far in the future.
- Rave to the IVHD board for insisting that the Kaufman Hall be a full report and not a summary and that it be made available to the public.
Overall, the meeting was productive. This IVHD board has a lot to complete and seems to be ready to tackle the issues. The next meeting on March 16, 2024, at 6:00 pm with the location to be determined will likely have only the Kaufman-Hall report as the primary agenda item.
Open issues to be addressed continue to be the Director and Officer Insurance, Whistleblower policies as well as a review of all policies and procedures, a list of licenses, and the road map. The road map, while not defined at the meeting is the timeline and what needs to be done. As you may remember, we provided an article on that some time ago.
As deeply involved individuals, my team will remain engaged and try to report in a prompt, clear, and concise manner to the readers. Thank you for your continued positive comments about our letters to the editors. We also appreciate those print media who consistently print them, especially those who so do promptly. Print media is a challenging business and this is only one issue for Imperial Valley. We believe it to be in the top three issues for the upcoming future.