Pioneers Files Injunction in State Superior Court
As we said before, we believe Pioneers is right in its pursuit to have AB918 thrown out. The fight continues: Pioneers Memorial Healthcare District (PMHD) has now filed an injunction regarding the implementation of AB918 in state court following a ruling by a Federal judge.
We have also repeatedly pointed out (with facts) that AB918 fails in many ways, beginning with the basis for the bill in the first place. It was purportedly needed to prop up the finances of the two hospitals in our county. Two things were—and remain—wrong with this:
- AB918 confuses/conflates the financial status of Pioneers (which is stable) with that of El Centro Regional Medical Center (ECRMC). It is true that ECRMC has been facing “imminent financial collapse” under management by UCSD.
- AB918 does not even require that ECRMC become a part of the new district. It’s difficult to understand the thinking behind this, given the urgency cited in the bill.
Even the very specific mandates of the bill could not be met. First, the newly created Imperial Valley Healthcare District (IVHD) board still hasn’t presented any factual basis for theoretical cost savings. Dissolving Pioneers and Heffernan into a single district, creating a new organization from scratch, and hoping it somehow makes up for the financially unstable El Centro (with all its liabilities and debts attached to the acquisition) just doesn’t add up.
(Here we must note that El Centro claims that after almost ten years of losses, now—that is, now that it might be sold—it has magically solved its financial issues. But if that’s true, hasn’t the reason behind AB918 gone away?)
Second, IVHD recently had to ask for special legislative intervention to delay a ballot measure on the new district’s funding. Again, despite the so-called urgency, IVHD didn’t do the work to put a plan in front of voters in time. Curious, since funding is sort of a big deal when you have two supposedly “financially failing” hospitals. Apparently, IVHD can’t make the math work, either.
What we have are non-urgent “urgency measures,” fantasy cost savings made up in a legislative back room and a rescue plan that doesn’t apply to the one hospital that’s actually in great need of a rescue. One might take from all this that the goal (or prize) of AB918 might not have been about protecting our healthcare or cost savings or even rescuing a hospital at all.
And now recent developments are making it clear that this whole scheme has been to dissolve PMHD to make room for another entity to take over the entire county’s healthcare. Is it all about money and power, as so many things have become in Imperial Valley?
You may ask “What other entity?”
In a subtle statement that garnered little attention at its September board meeting, IVHD’s legal counsel casually mentioned that plans are taking shape for a Joint Powers Agreement (JPA) with UCSD to manage the new district. This is particularly alarming for two reasons: 1) there has been no competitive process to find an appropriate partner to manage the IVHD; and 2) UCSD’s own shabby, nearly decade-long track record of running ECRMC, which resulted in the “imminent financial collapse” of ECRMC, supposedly what triggered the urgency clause of AB918 in the first place. Of course, they could make a better case if they could conjure up a miraculous, perfectly-timed “recovery” for El Centro.
But it’s not just UCSD’s track record with ECRMC that should be examined. There is the recent experience of the Tri-City Healthcare District which ended its negotiations with UCSD earlier this year.
According to a news article, the Tri-City CEO said, “UCSD Health had changed some key parameters from its original proposal that the health district could not accept…most significant of those changes was UCSD Health’s taking over management but leaving Tri-City with all the financial risk and responsibility…”
In addition, Tri-City said the “cost of running a UCSD Health facility is higher than Tri-City’s, and salary increases would have been prohibitive.”
Is this the deal the appointed IVHD board is willing to accept on behalf of its constituents? Higher costs, unchecked financial risk—with NO voter-approved funding mechanism? That seems to fit the three-strike rule. in any playbook.
Imperial County voters and all its residents deserve answers, not just a glossed-over, back-slapping press conference or slickly-written press release.
We want details, we want reports, and we want facts before the future of our healthcare facilities is sold out to the only bidder.
Stay tuned. There’s more to come.