UCSD Health will run financially troubled El Centro Regional Medical Center - The San Diego Union-Tribune | By The Perfect Enemy

UC San Diego Health will step in to temporarily run El Centro Regional Medical Center as a longer-term plan to build a countywide district hospital system unfolds.

Hospital directors unanimously approved a letter of intent with the university health system during a special meeting Monday with Patricia Maysent, a board member and director of UCSD Health, abstaining.

Tomás Oliva, a board member and El Centro city councilmember, emphasized that this pact is a bridge, not a destination. Plans are underway, he said, to form a single health care district that covers all of Imperial County, and if that happens — likely not for 12 months to 18 months — a new organization would make its own long-term decisions.

“The governing body of that new single health care district will take on the hiring for full-time management staff that would encompass all of the campuses within Imperial County,” Oliva said.

El Centro Regional is one of two hospitals serving the region, with a second, Pioneers Memorial Hospital, located just 13 miles north in Brawley.

The mounting cost of providing health care, especially of paying top dollar for a dwindling number of trained and licensed caregivers, has put El Centro Regional, and many other smaller facilities like it across the nation, in financial jeopardy. In its most recent financial update, the hospital’s dwindling unrestricted cash reserves are estimated to run dry in the fall.

In January, the hospital closed its labor and delivery department, working with Pioneers to send deliveries to Brawley.

Maysent said UCSD can provide the kind of expertise, in addition to additional financial support from a key lender, that can keep the situation solvent until longer-term solutions mature.

“We are 100 percent aligned that health care needs to come together here in Imperial Valley and that we have opportunities to improve clinical care and create a more seamless system across the region,” Maysent said. “

El Centro Regional is owned by the city while Pioneers is part of the Pioneers Memorial Healthcare District. Health care districts are state-chartered entities that serve defined geographic areas. Governed by elected directors, districts receive small streams of property tax revenue to help support their operations.

In San Diego County, North County’s Palomar and Tri-City districts operate hospitals in Escondido, Poway and Oceanside. The Grossmont Healthcare District contracts with Sharp HealthCare to run East County’s main medical center in La Mesa.

Pioneers’ district encompasses the land around Brawley, but not the entire county. Another district, Heffernan Memorial Healthcare District, has its own territory in and around Calexico to the south but does not operate its own hospital.

Damon Sorensen, interim chief executive at Pioneers, said Monday that there is significant community momentum around the idea of consolidating these facilities and their territories into one seamless health care system.

“The idea is that Pioneers and Calexico (districts) would go away and we would have a new entity called the Imperial Valley Health District with, you know, a new leadership team,” Sorensen said.

The other idea now under significant discussion, he added, is finding a way to combine Pioneers and El Centro Regional under the same state operating license. Currently, he said, both miss out on additional funding that is provided to hospitals with no other similar facilities nearby.

“Currently, neither one of us can get sole community hospital status, because we’re within 13 miles of each other and, to get that, you have to be the only hospital within 35 miles,” Sorensen said. “That’s an opportunity to enhance reimbursement and, of course, there’s multiple opportunities to reduce cost if we were one organization.”

Operating multiple physical campuses under a single license is not without precedent. In San Diego, for example, Scripps Mercy Hospital in Hillcrest and its sister campus in Chula Vista operate under a single license.

But consolidation could not occur, Sorensen said, without a ballot initiative and majority support from voters. The next eligible regular election will not occur until 2024.

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Published on The Perfect Enemy at https://bit.ly/3EOFMU7.