County accepts Sutter report, debate to continue

<p>The war of words — and numbers — over Sutter Medical Center’s plan for a new $175 million hospital in Santa Rosa was fought in public on Monday and likely will be waged for at least a year.</p><p>At stake is whether Sutter’s proposed 70-bed hospital next to the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts north of Santa Rosa is an adequate replacement for the former Community Hospital, an aging, earthquake-vulnerable 135-bed facility on Chanate Road.</p><p>Capping a half-day hearing before a standing-room-only crowd, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Monday to accept a county staff report on Sutter’s plan and authorize an environmental review of the project.</p><p>But Board Chairman Paul Kelley said there were “continuing concerns,” including the impact of Sutter’s plan on the county’s other hospitals, and called for more evaluation by county health officials.</p><p>Kelley noted that the supervisors were not approving or denying Sutter’s revised business plan for 70 beds, which was submitted last November. It replaced Sutter’s earlier proposal for a 118-bed hospital at the Wells Fargo Center site.</p><p>More than 180 people packed the board hearing room, most of them wearing green stickers that said: “Yes! Greenlight the new hospital.”</p><p>They got what they wanted on Monday, but a final decision by the supervisors is not expected until August of next year. A draft environmental impact report on the project is due out this September.</p><p>Sutter, a nonprofit health care organization that took over operation of county-owned Community Hospital in 1996, faces a Dec. 31, 2010 state deadline to start construction of a new hospital and hopes to open it in August, 2013.</p><p>As part of its takeover of Community Hospital, Sutter signed a contract with the county through 2020 requiring it to provide the public medical services the county is obligated by law to make available. Those primarily incolve services to </p><p>“A 70-bed hospital is the appropriate size,” Sutter CEO Mike Cohill told the supervisors.</p><p>Sutter’s daily average patient count has plummeted from 135 in 2002 to 63 in the first six months of this year, with a current occupancy rate of less than 50 percent, according to hospital statistics.</p><p>At a 70-bed hospital, and with serious cardiac cases no longer included, the current patient count would result in a 74 percent occupancy rate, within the desired range, Cohill said.</p><p>“Sutter operates today as if it were a 70-bed hospital without adversely affecting care,” Cohill said. </p><p>Cohill also lashed out at a full-page advertisement in The Press Democrat on Sunday sponsored by officials at 10 health care and hospital organizations, including rival Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital.</p><p>The ad’s claim that Sutter’s plan would burden other hospitals with added care for uninsured and underinsured patients was “an outrageous and irresponsible statement,” Cohill said.</p><p>All the hospitals — including Memorial, Petaluma Valley, Sonoma Valley, Palm Drive in Sebastopol and Healdsburg — “share Sutter’s obligation” to care for low-income patients, he said.</p><p>Evan Rayner, Healdsburg District Hospital CEO and one of 83 officials who signed the advertisement, urged the supervisors to require more study of the Sutter plan’s financial impact on district hospitals.</p><p>“We believe more due diligence is required,” Rayner said.</p><p>Kevin Klockenga, Santa Rosa Memorial CEO who also signed the ad, said he supported Sutter’s “desire and need” to build a new facility, but faulted the current proposal. “This plan is clearly not the best we can do,” he said.</p><p>Dr. Dick Kirk of the Sonoma Valley Health Care District Board called for a closer look at the impact of a “redistribution of patients” he attributed to the Sutter plan.</p><p>A Sonoma County Department of Health Services preliminary analysis of Sutter’s plan said the 70-bed facility would “likely operate at full capacity upon opening in 2013” and would “have difficulty” handling Sutter’s current volume of medical/surgical patients.</p><p>A projected shortfall of medical/surgical and intensive care unit beds would require expansion of the Sutter facility or patient redistribution, said Dr. Mary Maddux-Gonzalez, county public health officer. There are “significant obstacles” to such redistribution, she told the supervisors.</p><p>Supervisor Mike Kerns questioned the “dramatic reduction” of medical-surgical beds from 91 at the Chanate facility to 20 at the new Sutter hospital.</p><p>In response, Cohill said Sutter initially plans to use obstetrics beds to handle the overflow of medical/surgical patients. In the long run, he said, Sutter will become a predominantly obstetrics hospital.</p><p>Kaiser Permanente Medical Center was the only local hospital that did not sign the advertisement. Kaiser did not immediately provide a comment Monday on Sutter’s plan.</p>