Myths, Misperceptions, and Other Non-Truths

What We Hear
What The Actual Truth Is
Candidate Victoria Hughes/Angelo writes: "What I was told from the gentleman at insight was that the board had asked that if insight were to do a lease purchase for Hazel Hawkins that it would be a nonprofit organization, that insight would protect the service line for the hospital and retain 90% of the staff. They also asked that the name remain Hazel Hawkins, and that the property be sold for fair market value as determined my a third-party according to California state law.Insight agreed to all of the above. I think that sounds like a pretty good deal. What I would like to know is if the County were to take over the hospital? How would it be funded. It’s a simple question that has yet to be answered. If I am left to make an educated, guess I’m going to say it would be through bonds or lines of credit which would not benefit our community, but I would love to hear the plan of how that would be funded."
Insight's term sheet states that they will only make "offers of employment" to only 90.0% of the staff, so they are planning on laying off 10.0% of the our workforce. Further, notice it does not say "employ" but "Offers of Employment". That does not mean the 90.0% get to keep their current position or level of pay. The fair market value statement omits an important fact: there are many ways to determine FMV, and the one that the hospital board omitted (and there advisor who gets a slice of the sales price) is the discounted cash flow analysis and then took tangential discounts to the method they did use. The County has no plans and never did have any plans to take over Hazel Hawkins Hospital and therefore to funding would be required for that purpose.
A CB from Santa Valley writes: "...under the oversite of the Board of Supervisors, the taxpayers were robbed of $500,000 through the local library. This just happened! Five hundred thousand dollars! Also, the BOS cant fund the fire dept, or the sheriffs dept, they cant work with the city to get the animal shelter functional [she repeats this several times in the same social media thread], with laws for our furbabies, and to keep dangerous dog clubs out of our neighborhoods. They dont have the funds, the staff, or the experience. For for the 15 years Ive lived here, and paid gas taxes and measure g taxes, they have not cared for our roads. Even the bandaid of line striping done last year on a few of the roads has almost disappeared. If the county cannot run an efficent , funtional, transparent, small library, how can we expect them to oversee one of our most valuable assets. If you dont want to get stuck with paying hundreds, even thousands of dollars in higher taxes, paying for 30 year bonds, let the hospital go to people who have the experience in hospital bussiness. It really is a very complicated task that our local goverment is jusy not up to no matter the intended good will. Please think hard about what we see around us every day in local goverment. This decision is TOO BIG to get wrong."
Connecting the recently discovered embezzlment at the County Library just does not make sense. The County did catch it though! The Board of Supervisors (BOS) certainly does fund fire department and the sheriff, do work with the animal shelter (which is functioning) so on and so forth. They do an excellent job with what they are given, which is minimal funding, which comes mostly from property taxes that are significantly limited because of the nuances that Prop 13 has for counties such as San Benito. Regadless, the writer indicates that the County of San Benito wants to oversee the valuable Hazel Hawkins Hospital, which is false. They want to have some input into the oversight because they are the single most-needing entity of keeping a permanent hospital. Catherine inidcates that we will payer higher taxes or 30 year bonds if Measure X does not pass and that the hospital should go to people in the hospital business. Insight has no track record of running any hospital like Hazel Hawkins Hospital. Since consultants came in, albeit a really expensive cost, things have turned around dramatically.
A NL from Hollister Heights writes: "Many hospitals are privately owned, there’s no reason the local government needs to get involved."
Nicole is correct about privately owned hospitals. If Insight were a qualified buyer AND was paying full value for Hazel Hawkins Hospital it is possible that a sale of our very valuable hospital would make sense. However, San Benito County could be characterized as being too large not to have a hospital and not large enough to have the well-known inustry players come here, and certainly not to have multiple hospitals to compete for our business. Insight is unknown, has no experience running a rural hospital, and appears to like hospitals that are significantly distressed, buys them on the cheap, then extracts an exhorbiant mangement fee that it ships off to "Insight Management and Consulting Services, 4800 S Saginaw Street, Flint Michigan 48507.
Candidate Victoria Hughes/Angelo writes:"In regards to what would happen to the hospital if they decided not to purchase, I think it’s safe to assume that they would take any capital that they invested in, but they wouldn’t gut the hospital and leave it as a shell. nothing in their track record indicates that that’s what they would do. They have taken hospitals that were struggling and brought them into functioning community hospitals. In regards to the environment at the hospital I’m wondering if you work there and you are having firsthand experience. I can tell you that in most hospital settings. It’s usually us against them staff against management. That is nothing new and nothing unique for Hazel Hawkins. Where are you getting your information from I would be interested in reading the information that you were looking at as it does not coincide with what my research has shown me"
We are not aware of any hospitals that Insight purchased and turned them into community hospitals. Their flagship property, the former Mercy Hospital, was purchased for $1. and it does offer some services, but it is not close to what Hazel Hawkins Hospital does. A time-tested and true axiom of business is that management gets the union contract they deserve. We don't know the reference the author presents, unless it about the hospital board president lobbying union management to endorse the author because "she is pro-union". Our information comes from visiting Insight, going to every HHH board meeting, talking to board members and employees, and public documents.
CB writes "And btw, the county loaned the hospital ten millions dollars that we will prob not ever see again. If you dont find it helpful to know that we were robbed of $500,000 dollars under the oversite of the local goverment, I am sorry. "
We are not aware that the county has loaned the hospital any monies, much less ten millions dollars. Catherine Booth makes reference to the public being robbed of $500,000, probably referring to an embezzlement that occured at the local library that was caught. Connecting that to the county proposing a joint powers authority with the San Benito Health Care District to have more experienced individuals with focus on the core operations of Hazel Hawkins Hospital belies any negative inference.
CB writes: " BOS has oversite of the local library. This happened under their oversite. $500,000 of taxpayer dollars, stolen. They do not have the experience to have oversite of one of most valuable assets, and I am guessing most of the taxpayers dont want their taxes raised through bonds.
The library situation is deemed to be irrelevant. Catherine is correct that most of the taxpers don't want their taxes raised through bonds. There is nothing to suggest that not selling to Insight will lead to any increase in taxes or bonds, in fact, it could increase the risk. Taxes are explained more in depth here.
CB writes: "SBC will drive it into bankrupcy and we ( taxpayers) will be stuck paying for 30 year tax bonds."
San Benito County, as an entity, had nothing to with operating the hospital, including petitioning the US Bankruptcy court for Bankruptcy. It was the San Benito Health Care District that petitioned the court, and the court rejected that petition because they found the district was not insolvent. Be that as it may, San Benito County has no interest and has never indicated they would operate Hazel Hawkins Hospital. They offered $5.0 million in capital if there was addditonal oversight via a Joint Powers Authority that would appoint, with the partners in the JPA, including the San Benito Health Care District, a board specific to overseeing the hospital.
Employee DM writes: "The JPA only creates additional bureaucracy and gives power to APPOINTED individuals as opposed to elected individuals that are accountable by elections. The two supervisors said it was not likely that they would serve on the JPA, they would appoint someone. Don’t think this is a solution to help the hospital to have non-healthcare individuals telling the experts how to do their jobs!
The JPA would create a board of individuals with the particular skills that would best serve Hazel Hawkins Hospital, as opposed to what there is now is a board that to be on requires only that one is a registered voter in San Benito County. Overseeing the administration of a hospital does not necessarily require health care experience. It requires mostly evaluating whether management is doing their job or not and holding management accountable. Having health care experience would not be a negative either, especially if you have members who share their experiences and insight that is relative to many businesses. Also, not every medical professional is a great business person or manager.
Candidate Victoria Hughes/Angela writes:"the hospital should be sold so that it survives, and so that taxpayers are not burdened with more taxes/30 year bonds. The BOS is not capable. " and ""...You also are not being honest with the voters by leaving facts out such as Insight would purchase at market value, it will stay a non profit, it will retain 90 percent of the workforce, it want to bring specialties to HHH."
No one is contemplating that there will be more taxes/bonds and there is no additional risk of having to float a bond measureif we keep Hazel Hawkins Hospital a community hospital. The risk of having to float another bond is greater if we enter into a lease transaction with Insight and they fail to maintain/upgrade the property then bail. They would have already syphoned off our capital cushion and left us high and dry.
Wendy B from Sunnyside Estates writes: "Does anyone here find it concerning that everyone on the current board are people with no healthcare management or administration degrees ? For instance the current president of the board is an interior designer how exactly does that work ?" and Catherine responds "Wendy this is exactly why I think it should be sold. Another JPA/BOS oversite is more of the same."
The point of the increased oversight via the JPA is to find individuals with the demonstrated particular skills to provide the proper oversight, unlike we have now where the current elected board has not shown any desire to hold management accountable. In fact they have done the exact opposite. Do keep in mind that Plan B is to elect a new board, but be more careful about who we vote in. The overall arching goal is to have an improved, successful, and permanent Hazel Hawkins Hospital
Wendy B from Sunnyside Estates writes "the people that should be overseeing should have the same qualifications as the consultants who most likely have loads of experience in hospital executive administration finance and advanced degrees. Random smart hollister residents won’t cut it as we are all witnessing."
Wendy is correct that oversight board members should have the qualifications necessary to perform their task. The consultants she is referring to may not be the best in an oversight function. The consultants, in reality, only pointed out and fixed what many people saw as the most obvious basic errors the hospital was making for years. That does not mean they have the wisdom and maturity to evaluate and hold management accountable.
Wend B from Sunnyside Estates writes: "So they have a hospital board just to over see the district and now they want another board JPA to over see those who are overseeing others ? What ?? Do any of these people have any experience or education in the healthcare industry ?"
The JPA has not been formed and it has not appointed any members of the oversight board. If and when they do, it will consiste of experts in the areas necessary to best oversee the hospital.
Wendy B of Sunnyside Estates writes "...where are all these executives you speak of and why are they not already on the board ? You can’t just pull random “smart people” like we have now you need HEALTHCARE administration executives. If the BOS recruits some competent people for the jpa maybe people will have more confidence. But they will probably just pull some of their friends that they know from highschool because this is Hollister and that’s what they do here it’s like an old boys club of incompetence."
Not all people desire to run for elected office. The members of the JPA hopefully would not simply appoint friends. If they did, we would have to hold the members of the JPA accountable.
CB of Santa Ana Valley writes about a candidate: " a very good friend that I think would be awesome for the SBCHD, Zone 1, to make Hazle healthy again. I called her last minute when word got out that Jerry was stwpping down, and asked her to run. Although she has had some life changing occurrances in her life over the last year, she set them aside and decided she wanted to step in and help the community she lives in. She is an experienced RN, on both sides, (admin and bedside) she is fair, she is open, she wants to talk to the community, and the RNS that you keep saying " that dont want Insight to purchase". She cares about everyones voice in the community. Shes def not "silly".
The problem with the candidate that Catherine refers to is that the San Benito Health Care Dsitrict president is calling employees of the hospital and encouraging them to have their union endorse the candidate, possibly using the board president's office to make feel employees pressured or that there could a quid pro quo involved. That would also indicate the candidate is a "plant" of the administration and would not have the public's best interest in mind.
CB of Santa Ana Valley writes "That takeover is costing the Watsonville taxpayers 116 million dollars in bonds."
The author is presumably writing about Watsonville's successful bond measure for their hospital. That is not comparable to what is going on in San Benito County. In Watsonville, the residents took a private hospital and made it public. The bond measure Watsonville passed was to buy the real estate (because in the end it was less expensive then paying rent). Watsonville was not selling, they were buying!
Employee DM writes:"Insight took a massive hospital that was virtually closed with a single patient and invested tens of millions of dollars to keep it providing needed healthcare to a very low income community."
They did buy Mercy hospital in Chicago for $1 and it does provide some services to a very poor community. The property itself is large and offers incredible views of Lake Michigan. Their mission there is different than that in San Benito County. As described to this author, the community in which they operate does not typcially seek healthcare, so they spend a lot of resources to get people to come in for services you and I may take for granted. However, it may not be your facility of choice, especially if you wanted to deliver a baby, because thus far they have chosen not have an OB practice there. This highlights the HHH problem, but at a different level. We have a far-more robust hospital, but it has a bad reputation to many. So the people who want to keep it a community hospital want to improve that reputation, recruit more high quality practioneers that can offer more procedures and stop all that windshield time many endure for their healthcare.