After rally, Watsonville hospital administration announces hope through agreement

WATSONVILLE — After local California Nurses Association members told Watsonville Community Hospital CEO Steven Salyer and his team that they would not back down from fighting to keep the hospital open on Friday, Salyer responded with a report that their jobs may be saved.

Shortly after a noontime rally and press conference where Watsonville Community Hospital workers and supporters from nearby government offices called upon the managing corporation to figure out a way to keep the hospital operating until a new buyer is sought out and secured, Salyer announced that the hospital had reached a preliminary agreement with the Pajaro Valley Healthcare District Project to sell its operations.

“We are excited to have reached a preliminary agreement with the PVHDP for the acquisition of the hospital’s operations and to have funding to continue the life-saving work of providing care to our community,” Salyer wrote.

The health care district project is a consortium created by the County of Santa Cruz, the city of Watsonville, the Community Health Trust of Pajaro Valley and Salud Para La Gente. Led by former Health Services Agency leader Mimi Hall, the project team has pivoted since Salyer’s memos to try to garner community interest to raise the tens of millions of dollars needed to buy Watsonville Community Hospital.

Just 72 hours prior to the announcement, Hall was unsure whether the money could be acquired in time. Hall said Friday afternoon she could not provide information about where the funding was coming from yet, but that the agreement assures that hospital operations will continue until the organizations can close the sale.

“We really wanted to assure that there was no interruption in operations,” Hall explained to the Sentinel approximately an hour after signing the agreement. “We are grateful that we were able to buy the time that we need.”

With project funding secured, the hospital plans to file a motion asking the bankruptcy court to approve the nonprofit as the lead buyer and schedule a hearing for a court-supervised auction in February 2022. Hospital operations will be funded, in addition to the sale process, through March 2022.

Hall said this is just the first step of a lengthy process to the formation of a stable, sustainable hospital. That feat will only be successful if health care, nonprofit, county and city partners and the public come to the table with a hands-on mentality.

Former fears

The gathering of dozens of health care workers was in response to an initial letter and follow-up notice warning of the possibility of mass layoffs from Salyer last week. The newly appointed CEO stated that the COVID-19 pandemic had only worsened the institution’s financial situation — a crisis called by former owner Halsen Healthcare when it failed to pay its stakeholders.

“We have been working relentlessly to come up with solutions,” Salyer, who oversees the facility owned by Alabama-based Medical Properties Trust, promised.

The letter previewed that Watsonville Community Hospital as an entity would move through the process of declaring bankruptcy through court-approved Chapter 11 reorganization. The hope, Salyer communicated, was to find a nonprofit or corporation who was willing to buy the hospital and keep it running and then have the purchase approved by February or March. The notice that came to staff the next day, however, stated that if no buyer is approved by Jan. 28, the hospital will cease to exist.

“I am personally requesting that we hand-in-hand rise above these challenges to work toward a bright future, together,” Salyer said in the message circulated to the press.

The result of Prospect Medical Holdings’ 10-month holding is just another link of a chain of operators who have made promises of investment into the community and broken them, leaving longtime staff to clean up the pieces, alleged union members who spoke Friday before the announcement. ER nurse Quiche Rubacalva ran through the history of the hospital’s turnover in the last five years, a steady rotation of introduced ownership and exclaimed abandonment.

“Right after they arrived, Prospect asked to meet with our nurses and, instead of asking to work with us to ensure safety and put the critical money they claimed they brought back into health care, they violated our contract. They began threatening nurses to keep us quiet and (mentioned) disciplinary action,” Rubacalva said. “Then they surprised hundreds of nurses and health care staff with bankruptcy.”

This has led to a lower quality of patient care for Watsonville Community Hospital, Rubacalva said. That’s unacceptable to a group whose bottom line is giving those they treat the love and attention they deserve.

“A domino effect will follow,” the ER nurse added upon the event that the hospital does close. “Patients who require immediate, life-saving care? I hope Dominican or Salinas or Natividad aren’t too far away.”

Rubacalva said that, on average, the Watsonville hospital’s ER sees 75 to 80 patients daily. This number was higher in peak COVID times. Critical care nurse Roseann Farris said that the hospital, as recently as two weeks ago, was still receiving transports from hospitals across the Greater Bay Area. Both workers feared that nearby counties would become inundated with visitors if Watsonville Community Hospital shuttered and, as a result, caused a new influx.

The welfare of both patients and workers is what called former council member Felipe Hernandez to continue to fight for stability for Watsonville Community Hospital. The hospital is a community asset that must be protected, he said.

“A lot of people were born here at this hospital. I was born at this hospital… It’s a part of our community, a part of our history,” Hernandez, who represented elected leadership alongside Councilman Lowell Hurst and analysts from the offices of Senator John Laird, Assemblyman Mark Stone, Assemblyman Robert Rivas and Rep. Jimmy Panetta, said.

Ultimately, trying to keep hospital doors open was the final throe of a battle that has long raged between those who model their service around money and those who model their service around putting patients first, Rubacalva concluded.

“It’s been a fight for 22 years,” he said before Prospect Medical Holdings’ notification. “This is the end game. Someone is going to go down, and it won’t be us.”