PD Editorial: Facing facts with Palm Drive Hospital

The saga that is Palm Drive Hospital has gone on for some time, but it can't continue. The gatekeepers for the Sebastopol facility made that clear Tuesday night.

The bottom line is that the hospital is low on patients, high on debt and on course to run out of money by the end of the month. It's a perfect storm of problems for a community hospital that's already had to seek protection from creditors once before, in 2007.

Now it's headed down that road again.

The Palm Drive Health Care District board voted unanimously Tuesday to authorize a Chapter 9 bankruptcy. It's the first step toward closing the Sebastopol hospital's emergency room with the hope of keeping the rest of the facility open in some capacity.

But the sense of those from the public on what should happen was far from unanimous.

Many, including hospital employees, applauded when the board put off until Monday a plan to close the emergency room. But that may just be delaying the inevitable.

Opponents of closure say the extra days will give the public more time to voice their concerns. We're in favor of people sharing their opinions. Words like disappointing, maddening, maybe even life-threatening, are appropriate at a time like this.

But words are not going to change the facts - nor are they going to alter the realities of the health care environment that make it difficult for a hospital like Palm Drive to survive.

Here are the facts:

; The number of patients treated at the hospital has fallen dramatically. The hospital is licensed for 37 beds. Its budget is built on the expectation of filling 12 beds. But Palm Drive is averaging less than nine patients a day.

; The intensive care unit treats an average of just 1.5 patients each day while the medical-surgical unit handles 7.4 patients a day.

; Meanwhile, nearly 60 percent of patients at Palm Drive are Medicare beneficiaries, which means smaller reimbursements for services than for other insureds.

And with the new Sutter Hospital opening soon next to the Wells Fargo Center for the Performing Arts in Santa Rosa, the competition for patients is likely to get worse.

The bottom line is that on some days the hospital has more nurses than patients. It's hard to imagine any scenario under which that would pencil out.

It doesn't. Since July, the hospital has lost more than $1 million, 35 percent of it in January alone.

Residents certainly need to speak out. Closing the emergency room would be a major setback for west county. It means longer drives to get to emergency rooms located east of Highway 101.

But while it vents, the community also needs to galvanize in support of efforts to salvage what services can still be provided at Palm Drive - and do it quickly.

There are worse things than insolvency and reinvention. And if the hospital doesn't act quickly, it may soon find what those are.