Palm Drive and Marin County General hospitals have forged an alliance, giving the Sebastopol hospital access to its partner's specialists, medical foundation and business services.
The pact, approved Monday by Palm Drive's board of directors, is designed to save the hospital money while improving the health care services it can provide by joining a regional network.
It will result in the departure of the Tennessee company that has managed the Sebastopol hospital for the past two years.
Under the terms of the contract, Palm Drive will pay Marin General $15,000 a month.
It gives Palm Drive access to doctors in the Marin-Sonoma Independent Physicians Association and the Prima Medical Foundation. It will also consolidate such services as information and medical technology, business, billing, procurement and physician recruitment.
"These are exceptionally good people. We are hooking up with people with phenomenal experience in health care," said Chris Dawson, treasurer of the Palm Drive board. "It is a tremendous resource for us."
Palm Drive will hire its own chief executive officer, who will still be responsible for running the 37-bed Sebastopol hospital. It will share a chief financial officer with Marin General and Sonoma Valley Hospital, which struck a similar agreement with the Greenbrae medical facility in May.
Palm Drive's chief executive officer will be a member of a management team that will include the chief executives of Marin General and Sonoma Valley.
HealthTech Management Services of Brentwood, Tenn., which now runs Palm Drive at a cost of $720,000 a year, will be phased out of Palm Drive over the next four months.
HealthTech's chief executive officer, Rich Polheber, will remain with Palm Drive for the next four months and the chief financial officer, David Glassburn, will remain for one month.
The contract was unanimously passed by the five-member board on Monday. It will take effect Jan. 1.
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