San Joaquin General Hospital in French Camp serves a majority of the county's uninsured hospital patients, a fact that has the hospital seriously in the red. Glenn Moore/Tracy Press
Those are the most severe of more than a dozen recommendations issued in a “white paper” released as part of the agenda of the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors, who met Tuesday to discuss the matter at their meeting Tuesday.
The hospital has put county government under growing pressure since 2001, when it started to cost more money to run than it brought in.
In the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2009,
the hospital lost $8 million, and is on pace to be in the red another $20 million this fiscal year, said county administrator Manuel Lopez.
In the short-term, the head of the county health care department, Ken Cohen, suggests ways to increase hospital income and cut costs.
One plan now in place to lure more Medi-Cal patients from private doctors could bring San Joaquin General as much as $3 million.
Renegotiating maintenance and supply contracts could save as much $500,000 next fiscal year, and Cohen says it could continue to cut overtime for nurses, which started last December.
The hospital might also raise several-hundred thousand dollars by changing how it bills Medi-Cal patients, Cohen suggests.
But the biggest savings would come with layoffs, which Cohen said could trim as much as $4.8 million from its budget.
Cohen recommends the board cut between 60 and 100 jobs at the hospital and within the county’s string of community clinics in the next 60 days, including doctors, a move that would be hashed out during negotiations with workers and unions.
Clinics that see few patients could be closed, and Cohen suggests San Joaquin General cut back on resident doctors and its role as a teaching hospital.
And the hospital could be sold or leased to another organization, which would force the county to have a special hearing to transfer ownership. About 10 years ago, at least one private entity asked if county officials would be interested in selling the hospital, but there has been no such interest recently, county officials have said.
The hospital could also save money by contracting out hospital security jobs and transfer patients with head injuries, a step that would require removal of the hospital as the designated emergency room for those injuries.
Cohen warned the board that if the recommendations are postponed, the hospital “will continue to incur … loses in excess of $20 million” annually.
n Contact a Tracy Press reporter or editor at 835-3030 or tpnews@tracypress.com.Contact a Tracy Press reporter or editor at 835-3030 or tpnews@tracypress.com.
What outrageous statement? Jerry is not the only congressman in the Stockton Metropolitan area.
Pour your KoolAid down the Peripheral Canal. Didn't you notice nobody else wants to waste money on such a folly.
If you look at the congressional maps. There are two congressional districts in Stockton. Could go outside CD-11 easily. A possible solution to migigate risk of losing the Vet's Facility is to write your Congressman and tell him to put a Veteran's Hospital in Tracy. Anyway, what has he done for Tracy lately? So we don't have anything to lose. Except the Vet's Facility.
Another Canal?
You've got to be kidding? Right? California already has several canals. They snake all over the Ca landscape. And every so many years somebody calls for yet another canal, yet the ones we have are not being used. Makes no sense. It is more unnecessary waste to build yet another canal or aquaduct when the existing canals don't generate revenue and remain unused. Any additional Peripheral Canal(s) won't make revenue positive and would take precious money from California schools. The only reason we need canals is for flood control, as they built in Pleasanton, CA. North of Tracy we simply need to shore up existing levees. People don't have common sense anymore.
Please, before you make outrageous statements again. There are four counties in the 11th district,and the San Joaquin county is one.
That means that Stockton could be the place for the Veterans Hospital. Why do you keep saying that the hospital won't be in Jerry's district?
About the peripheral canal, it will bolster the economy in our neck of the woods. After all the local "Jim Jones" type of government is not working.
In case you are not up on the Guyana "Jim Jones" government, the definition is everyone gives their money to the founder Jones, and then when the money runs out he tells everyone to drink cool aide.
And the airlines pulled out of the Stockton Airport not the County.
I don't even think the Veterans Hospital is going to be in our congressman's district. When was the last time you talked to Jerry?
There's no easy way to say this. So I'm just going to come right out and say it. Hospitals have become $5000 dollar per night government paid hotels where you can go light up a joint.
That's the problem with the NancyCare supporters don't want you to know about. They prefer healthcare takeover to reform.
That hospital has been run by outside management firms as consultants, company after company, and one recommendation after another...over and over. You should see the huge dollars wasted on that! Departments are run by "travelers", for years...at a huge cost to the taxpayers...for their consultant salary, their housing, their trips to visit home often. They can't hire locally because of the mess.
Don't just blame the poor. This hospital is not being properly managed. Are the supervisors getting their pockets padded by the constant influx of consultants and outside firms to run it? It never changes.
As for laying off security personnel. Well. That one I would be behind. I once worked there and I can tell you that their security people are busy with gabbing, and chewing danish. Night and early morning staff have to park miles away (parking lot has a key to drive through, but anyone can walk through)... and the characters released from jail not far away come through there to get to a bus...and perhaps steal your purse, assault you, and/or your car on their way. No security to watch you there! Even reports to OSHA get ignored.
I was passionate about serving our most needy, and sick...but to see the waste in that hospital's management was awful, and to have to feel unsafe parking and walking to the door...it was too much. They didn't care about those of us who did care.
There goes Leroy Ornellas giving another story, about his support for the remodeling old the San Joaquin General.
If you read some of his stuff you will see he turned down the Stockton Airport, the SJ hospital,the peripheral canal and a vets hospital. As did 3 other supervisors look it up.