PVHD, County Set To Begin Hospital Management Negotiations

Riverside County and the Palo Verde Healthcare District are set to begin negotiations regarding the day-to-day operational management of the hospital after both agencies ratified a loan agreement to keep the hospital’s emergency department and community clinic operational.

“Our goal, our hope, our intent, is to get an agreement on the management of the emergency department in the very near future and bring that back to this board in February so that we can take the steps necessary to really get in, understand and stabilize for the folks in that community,” County Executive Officer Van Wagenen said at the January 27 Riverside County Board of Supervisors meeting. 

Following Tuesday’s meeting, Van Wagenen told The Riverside Record that it was the county’s goal to provide the district with an initial proposal by the end of the day. According to the loan agreement, the agencies have roughly three weeks to come to an agreement.

The current plan, Van Wagenen told supervisors, was for a county-led strikeforce, headed by the Riverside University Health System team, to not only stabilize the emergency department, but also conduct an assessment and evaluation of the hospital’s operation and make recommendations about next steps over the course of roughly 180 days.

He further told The Record that he was confident that an agreement would be reached, because it was the best option to keep emergency services available for the residents of Blythe, a reality PVHD’s bankruptcy attorney Tinho Mang echoed.

“There’s a lot of concern from the public about whether or not this is a good deal for the district,” he said at PVHD’s January 26 special meeting. “This is an absolutely essential deal for the district.”

At that meeting, the remaining members of the PVHD board unanimously approved the loan agreement and authorized the district’s legal counsel and representatives to negotiate the management agreement. 

The members also thanked both the county and the city for continuing to support the beleaguered healthcare district. That gratitude was reiterated at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting by PVHD Board Clerk Joanna Gonzalez, who also noted the county’s ongoing support of the hospital.

“Over the past year, and especially in recent months, the district has faced severe and compounding challenges,” she told the supervisors. “The county’s willingness to step in with financial support, technical expertise, expertise and ongoing collaboration has provided critical stability at times when the hospital and community face this prospect of imminent service disruptions and the possibility of full final closure.”

The hospital’s financial troubles came to a head last May when the district announced that the hospital would be suspending patient admissions due to financial issues. 

In September, the Riverside County Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) voted to begin the process of dissolving the district. The following month, the hospital filed for bankruptcy prompting LAFCO to reevaluate its next steps, and the supervisors approved a property tax revenue advance in an effort to ease financial constraints on the hospital.

Last month, the district secured a $4 million loan in an effort to participate in a state funding program that would have provided the district with an estimated $10 million in funding. Earlier this month, the state rejected the district’s application for the funding, prompting the city of Blythe to provide a $330,000 bridge loan. That loan allowed the hospital to remain open for an additional week, at which point the county stepped in with its offer of a $1 million bridge loan. 

“This is an independent healthcare district with a board that is independently elected by the residents of the Palo Verde community, but the county also recognize[s] that in many ways, we provide the safety net services for all of our residents across the county, especially when we’re talking about health and human services,” Van Wagenen said at Tuesday’s meeting, noting the difficulty of the decision to get further involved. “So the decision was made to loan the health care district $1 million to try and provide bridge operational funding for approximately three weeks.”

If the hospital closes, more than 17,000 residents will be left without local access to emergency care, according to the city. Those with PPO plans would be forced to travel 50 miles to La Paz Regional Hospital in Arizona, while those with HMOs would need to travel 100 miles to John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital in Indio or other Coachella Valley hospitals.