PPH building new hospital to please Kaiser

Note: A severely edited version of this article was printed on 1/11/08.

Recently, the Palomar Pomerado Hospital District proudly announced an improved credit rating. A good credit rating is essential as PPH goes deeply into hock in order to construct its white elephant ERTC hospital. Projected philanthropic support has certainly stayed away. Standard & Poor, which just a few months ago had given our hospital district very low marks, changed its rating due to two key developments. First, the district finally admitted that it was drastically curtailing its construction plans and, secondly, that they were depending on Kaiser Healthcare as a key source of funds. These two developments are integrally related.

It is now clear that the motivation behind building the bizarrely located new hospital was never due to earthquake issues or other inadequacies at the existing site. Such claims were bogus from the beginning. Instead, the district is transparently pandering to Kaiser, most of whose patients will come from the west and from the north of our district. PPH has stubbornly, and some argue illegally, refused to fully disclose its agreement with Kaiser despite numerous requests for public disclosure. We can only conclude that doing so would be embarrassing, except to S&P.

Building a new hospital under the secret Kaiser plan is causing the district to go into unprecedented debt, take on incalculable risks and to abandon virtually all other promises that carried Prop BB to victory. Kaiser’s generous support of the Prop BB campaign is paying off. This may be OK with bondholders but can only leave the rest of us feeling betrayed.

For example, the $93 Million that was just recently promised for renovations to the downtown Escondido campus has shriveled down to $3 Million in the most recent plan. Escondido officials sit idly by as fervent pledges, which paved the way for rezoning the ERTC property, are cynically abandoned. Many of the promises for Pomerado hospital and various community clinics are also evaporating.

The most outrageous broken promises surround the new hospital itself. Even as it generates a huge sucking sound by absorbing all available funds, the most recent plans show that it is no longer the impressive, state of the art project originally presented. For example, there will not even be a women’s center when it opens! Presumably, emergencies involving pregnant women will not be handled by the new trauma center but instead be shuttled to the downtown location until this critical component can be funded. A half-baked, bifurcated and inefficient operation is the best we can hope for into the foreseeable future.

After the dust settles, our district will be left in a morass that the elected PPH board is entering with its eyes wide open. Our only sliver of hope lies in the fact that it is still not too late to stop this slowly moving train wreck. Construction has been delayed due to surprising and costly soil issues at the new site. This is our first taste of many inevitable setbacks. However, it gives us a brief respite before limited district funds are further squandered.

The quality of our health care system will be irreparably damaged unless an abrupt change in direction is implemented. This is the time for a public outcry led by elected officials and all those with influence. We must all appeal to the PPH board to abandon its plans for an unnecessary new hospital, live within its means and adjust their facilities plan to the current realities and pressing needs of our district rather than the narrow, private interests of Kaiser.