Palm Drive district election could influence hospital plans

Two strong supporters of reviving the shuttered Palm Drive Hospital as a full-service inpatient facility won the two open seats Tuesday on the board of directors of the Palm Drive Healthcare District.

Richard Powers, a Sebastopol family physician, won 46.6 percent of balloting, and Dennis Colthurst, a retired Sebastopol police officer, earned 29.9 percent of the vote. Both Powers and Colthurst strongly endorse a plan to reopen Palm Drive as an acute care hospital with an emergency department.

That plan is being proposed by the Palm Drive Health Care Foundation, a nonprofit group that supported hospital operations through donations and gifts. The foundation’s plan is currently being reviewed by the health care district, which voted to close the hospital in April because of severe financial troubles and declining overnight patient stays.

Powers said his victory should send a strong signal to the district board that west county residents want Palm Drive hospital reopened with an emergency department. He said that any candidate who supported reopening the hospital would have won.

“I think it represents our community’s will to have a hospital back,” Powers said. “I think we will get our hospital back and we need it.”

Powers said that prior to the election he was ”very involved” with the foundation’s proposal. He said the foundation has attracted about $5 million in funding pledges aimed at getting the hospital back on its feet.

Another $5 million needs to be raised to pay for operations, because the hospital will not receive Medicare reimbursements for the first few months until the facility gets back in good standing with the federal government. When the hospital’s Medicare account is re-activated, the hospital can bill for services retroactively, he said.

Powers, who strongly opposed the hospital closure, said that the foundation will be making a presentation about the financial viability of its plan to a health care district ad hoc committee next week. There are five board members on the health care district board. The addition of Powers and Colthurst could bolster support for the hospital’s re-opening on the five-member board, which voted 4-1 to close the hospital.

Jim Horn, an engineer and current district board member, lost his bid to remain on the board in the three-person race. Horn earned 23.1 percent of the vote. Horn was appointed to the board after board president Chris Dawson quit in the aftermath of the hospital closure.

Jim Maresca, the lone dissenting board member in the April closure vote, said Horn and fellow board member Nancy Dobbs will end their terms in early December, when the new members will be sworn in. Their last meeting will be Monday, he said.

Maresca said he also wants to see the hospital reopen, but he wants it to be financially viable. He said he has not seen the financial analysis of the foundation’s hospital plan.

”Let’s make sure that whatever we do next has solid financial underpinnings and will be sustainable for the next decade or two,” Maresca said. “We don’t want to put the community through yet another failure.”

Sandra Bodley, another board member, said she was hoping that Horn would have retained his seat on the board, which could have benefited from both his prior experience on the board as well as his technical and analytical skills.

She said she has great respect for Powers as a clinician and would also like to see the hospital reopen if it can be done responsibly.

“We all would like to see it open if it’s sustainable,” she said. “That has been the issue for the past 15 years. Today’s health care environment makes it even more challenging.”

District board president Marsha Sue Lustig said the foundation was able to successfully send “the message that only two candidates really wanted to reopen the hospital.”

“I remain willing as ever to help reopen a hospital that is feasible and sustainable,” Lustig said. “And I hope to be able to continue to investigate and provide health care options for raising the collective health of our entire district.”

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @renofish.