Firm offers to keep San Leandro Hospital open

By Karen Holzmeister
Hayward Daily Review
June 5, 2009

SAN LEANDRO — Prime Healthcare Services, which owns and operates 13 California hospitals, has offered to lease San Leandro Hospital and keep it open for medical, surgical and emergency care services.

The proposal from San Bernardino County-based Prime includes a commitment to operate the hospital for at least 10 years, and to invest $20 million in working capital, equipment and building improvements at the 122-bed hospital during the first year.

However, the hospital's hotly debated future — the subject of three upcoming meetings that begin Monday — rests largely with Sutter Health, which since 2004 has leased San Leandro Hospital from the Eden Township Healthcare District; Eden Medical Center of Castro Valley, a Sutter affiliate that operates San Leandro Hospital; and district directors.

In 2007, directors gave Sutter an exclusive option to buy San Leandro Hospital. But Sutter and the district both say San Leandro Hospital continues to lose money.

With directors' approval, Sutter wants to sell or lease San Leandro Hospital to Alameda County, which would convert the hospital at East 14th Street and 138th Avenue into rehabilitation and urgent-care centers.

Local doctors, San Leandro Hospital employees and area residents are strongly lobbying to retain a full-service hospital.

"Let the community pressure Sutter to allow an acute-care hospital in our midst," said health care  district Director Carole Rogers, who along with Director Vin Sawhney disclosed the six-page Prime bid Thursday, a day after the five directors reviewed it during a closed-door meeting.

The district, according to a November 2008 consultant's report, doesn't have the estimated $36.9 million it would need for San Leandro Hospital's first-year startup costs as an independent medical facility.

Yet directors, under increasing community pressure to block Sutter's plan, have responded by hiring public relations consultant Jonnie Banks at $100 an hour to, as her contract says, present "the actions of the district in the best possible light."

Banks is a former Sutter employee and a former Eden Medical Center spokeswoman who now also is director of communications at St. Joseph Notre Dame High School in Alameda.

Last week, Banks posted a question-and-answer statement on the district's Web site defending district actions. The Prime proposal is supposed to appear on the Web site this weekend.

On May 21, Dr. Rajendra Ratnesar, who chairs the board of directors, sent an error-laden letter to San Leandro Mayor Tony Santos, asking if the city wanted to operate the hospital. The letter, which had incorrect dates and incomplete financial figures, asked for a response in less than two weeks.

Santos, in his May 27 response, said the city doesn't have the expertise or the money to fund startup and operational costs. He also described Ratnesar's requested time frame as "unrealistic," given the complexities of such a proposal.

Representatives of Prime Healthcare Services and the Alameda County Healthcare Services Agency plan to attend Monday's meeting.

Sawhney, an internist who sees patients at San Leandro Hospital, wants the hospital to remain open. So does Rogers, a former San Leandro Hospital nurse who now works at the county's Highland Hospital in Oakland. The three other directors have not yet responded to Daily Review requests for comment.

Sawhney, elected to the district board last November, contended Thursday that Sutter "from day one (of its lease) wanted to close or turn San Leandro Hospital into a rehabilitation center. The (2007) agreement is written in such a way that it has led to the hospital's demise. It's very disturbing that it has been done without community involvement and other studies."

The district will host a community meeting at 6 p.m. Monday in the Dave Karp Room at the San Leandro Main Library, 300 Estudillo Ave. For more information, visit www.primehealthcareservices.com, www.edenmedicalcenter.org or www.ethd.org.