A repeal of cuts in Medicare reimbursement to doctors and a new survey showing significant support for Sonoma Valley Hospital will help administrators steer toward the bond measure they say will keep the hospital running.
Results of the June, 2008 Dresner, Wickers and Associates survey, conducted among 300 residents selected at random, show high ratings for the services the hospital provides, and offer encouragement that the community might support a bond measure to ensure the hospital’s survival. While the survey acknowledged that the voters may be “fatigued with the drawn-out decision-making process,” it concluded that the base of support “remains strong” and that the “right campaign” has a “great chance” of succeeding in November.
In December, 2007, a similar survey posted similar results, but the bond measure failed to achieve the 67 percent needed for passage. However, since that time, the hospital has engaged in dialogue with the community and clarified its direction. The current survey shows the “Yes” responses having risen steadily since the January poll, but board member Bill Boerum said after the new results were received, that’s not surprising. “Relative support has always been the same,” he said, “showing the public is supportive of the hospital. The challenge now comes down to simple politics – identifying many thousands of supporters, and then getting the supporters out to vote. So you have to have a good political campaign, and that involves raising money.”
Boardmember Mike Smith said when asked about the report, “Most people will vote for something they see as essential to their well-being and their community’s well-being. If we can raise enough money to run a simple, honest, straight forward campaign and tell it like it is, we’ll have one more chance to save the hospital. And if we don’t, people will rue the day – because we’ll never get it back.”
Over the past months, the hospital has labored to learn from the failure of Measure F. The message this time, said Boerum, will be more direct. “Last time, we were hampered because there were a number of different uses of the bond, and that was confusing. Now, this is much more of a single focus theme.”
Smith agreed. “The most important thing in the world is the quality of the people taking care of you,” he said. “And that they have the right modern equipment. We shouldn’t be talking about building a bigger, better hospital. We should be talking about protecting the health care of our community and making sure the people will be there for you, whether you’re a Kaiser member or somebody else, so you’ll get the treatment you need. I think if we focus on that, people will go for it.”
The bottom line, repeated regularly at board meetings, is that good health care be available to all who need it.
Helping to maintain that standard was the repeal by Congress last week of a 10.1 percent cut in Medicare reimbursements to doctors. The bill passed by a “veto-proof” 69-30 vote, with Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), interrupting his treatment for a malignant brain tumor to make a surprise visit to the Senate to cast the crucial vote. Hospital CEO Carl Gerlach said the vote “helps the hospital because it helps the base of physicians – period.”
“I don’t know what the doctors would have done had that cut gone through,” Gerlach said, adding that the Medicare cut “would have been a major financial hit” to doctors, coming at a particularly bad time for doctors across the nation but especially in California, where doctors are already staggered by a similar cut in state reimbursements. “That kind of cut anywhere in the United States would be bad enough, but in the same state which is doing a 10 percent cut in Medi-Cal – ouch!” he said. He added that had the Medicare cut gone through, it was likely some physicians would have had to stop practicing. Already, the living wage for doctors in California is near the bottom of the scale compared to the rest of the country, he said. “It just wouldn’t have been worth it any more.”
Representative Mike Thompson (D.-Calif.) whom Gerlach called a “major health care hero,” said Monday, “If these cuts had gone through, the docs would have left, and there wouldn’t be anybody to take the Medicare patients in or out of the hospital.” Thompson is on the Medicare committee, and authored some provisions within the bill including a provision for expanding tele-medicine and a provision that would allow doctors called into the military to get substitutes for their practices while they’re gone. He said the situation for small, rural hospitals is critical and that it’s up to the communities to determine their fate.
“It’s a struggle everywhere. I don’t think there’s a hospital anywhere in rural America that isn’t having problems,” Thompson said. “The community’s got to come together with what’s going to happen to this facility.”
