Mayor Rick Cook addresses the media at a Monday press conference. The press conference was held to call on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to intervene to break the logjam and open Santa Paula Hospital. Photo by Brian D. Wilson

‘Bureaucratic logjam’ delaying reopening of SP Hospital

June 21, 2006
Santa Paula News
By Peggy Kelly Santa Paula TimesAlthough the celebration of the reopening of Santa Paula Hospital is slated for Saturday, that doesn’t mean the revived “Hospital on the Hill” will be accepting patients due to what Mayor Rick Cook said is a “bureaucratic Sacramento logjam” regarding the final licensing inspection that is keeping the doors closed.Cook called a press conference on Monday to ask Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to personally intervene in the bureaucratic holdup.“The county - led by Supervisor Kathy Long - and the city and the creditors committee have fought to put this together and now we’re being held up by state government,” said Mayor Rick Cook. “There are about five-thousand people in the (State Health Services) department” charged with the final inspection “and they can’t set an inspection…and we have 60,000 people who need services.”Cook noted that the “hospital is all done and ready to go, staffed, everything and it just sits and we wait.”The hospital - only one of three in the state built with community donations - closed on Dec. 19, 2003 with the directors filing for bankruptcy three days later.Offering the only Emergency Room for the approximately 60,000 Santa Clara River Valley residents as well as for Highway 126 commuters, the hospital was ultimately purchased by the Ventura County Medical Center for $2.75 million.After the deal closed last year the county expected the hospital to be reopened in January but once inside it was found that the building needed major repairs as well as a considerable amount of medical equipment that was missing from the premises.
The hospital received approval to reopen on May 25, 2006 from the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development pending a final inspection by the California Department of Health Services.“That final inspection has not occurred,” although the fire inspection - the next to the last step in the process - was completed June 8.According to a state Department of Health Services spokeswoman an inspection team is being readied for a visit the first week of July.Not good enough said Cook: “While a fully equipped and operational hospital sits ready to once again serve the residents of the Santa Clara Valley, it remains closed because the State of California can not find time to provide a final inspection.”Expected to join Cook at the hospital-based press conference are members of the Santa Paula and Fillmore City Councils, Supervisor Kathy Long and county health officials as well as representatives of Assemblymember Audra Strickland and State Senator George Runner.



Site Search

E-Subscribe

Subscribe

E-SUBSCRIBE
Call 805 525 1890 to receive the entire paper early. $50.00 for one year.

webmaster