EL CENTRO — The El Centro City Council has assumed governance of the El Centro Regional Medical Center’s Board of Trustees to help stabilize the financially distressed hospital.
The council’s action was characterized as an effort to reinforce the governance and financial sustainability of ECRMC and came as an emergency motion added to the council’s agenda during its meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 15.
Speaking at the meeting was Scott Phillips, managing director of Healthcare Management Partners, a consultant hired by Preston Hollow Community Capital, which is the majority holder of $125 million in bonds issued in 2018.
The bond revenues were used to fund hospital improvements including a 29,000-square foot Ancillary Service Building and expansion of the Emergency Department, the Preston Hollow website stated.
“Hospitals nationally are experiencing great distress. We’re seeing rapidly declining patient volumes. We’re seeing dramatic declines in cash reserves. The declines in cash reserves are from two sources. One increasing costs and declining volume, but hospitals like yours are now being called upon to pay back millions of dollars, which were advanced to them during the pandemic,” Phillips told the council. “Your hospital alone has paid back more than $6 million in the last four months alone.”
Phillips noted that the hospital additionally had to struggle with moving forward with improvements during the pandemic, and now is about to transition to an electronic medical record system.
“You’re about to undertake the most complicated activity that a modern hospital can undertake, which is replacing your existing information technology infrastructure with a fully integrated electronic record. It has the added benefit of really improving and facilitating patient care, coordination between the hospital and doctors and family. So it’s a step forward, and I think you should be proud to be taking it,” said Phillips.
El Centro Interim City Manager Cedric Ceseña explained that the former seven-member board was composed of two City Council members, and four public members, along with input from representatives from hospital medical staff and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Health Care Network.
“Over the past five years there’s been an increasing number of financial instabilities at the hospital as a result of both changing federal reimbursement guidelines as well as management challenges,” said Ceseña.
In a press release released the morning after the meeting, the city emphasized that the hospital board’s governance change is not intended to affect ECRMC’s medical or other staff who remain vital to its operations.
Additionally, Mayor Tomas Oliva said that the change in governance to the ECRMC Board of Trustees will not affect the hospital’s ability to provide care to the community.
“During the past several years, ECRMC has experienced escalating challenges in its operation,” said Oliva in a written statement. “As a municipal hospital, it is our obligation to the community and all ECRMC employees to lead through these challenges by making the necessary changes to make our hospital more efficient and sustainable. No hospital services will be interrupted by this change.”
The council’s restructuring of the board followed third-party, objective confirmation of financial challenges resulting from the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, including declining revenues, the city’s press release stated.
City Recognizes Small Business Saturday
During its meeting on Tuesday, the City Council proclaimed Nov. 26 — the first Saturday after Thanksgiving Day — as Small Business Saturday.
“All of us here in this room know a small business owner and would like to make sure to ensure them success. Part of that means being their customers, being their clients, and making sure that we are drawing people there,” said Mayor Oliva.
While reading the proclamation, Oliva cited government statistics showing that there were 32 million small businesses in America that accounted for two-thirds of new jobs created between 2000-2019.
“I ask all of our residents to please ensure as much as they can that the Saturday after Thanksgiving to shop local,” said Oliva after reading the proclamation. “If you’re going Christmas shopping stay away from the box stores.”
In other business at the council meeting, the contract with Imperial County Work Training Center, Inc., was amended and extended to provide janitorial services to the new El Centro Public Library.
Approval was also given for the Community Services Department to ask for bids for the Debbie Pittman Field Lighting Project that will replace and upgrade the field’s lighting system.
