Tuesday, June 19, 2018
Open Board of Directors Meeting
Norton Event Center
3200 Inland Empire Blvd.
Ontario, CA 91764
Minutes
Present: Deborah Barmack, Carole Beswick, Ken Coate, Sandra Espadas, Adam Eventov, Otis Greer, Pam Langford, P.T. McEwen, John Mirau, Roman Nava, Vikki Ostermann, Keven Porter, Dan Roberts, Kristine Scott, Paul Shimoff and David Van Voorhis.
Guests: David Foate, Peggy Hayes, Mike Tracey, Terrence Trudo and Phil White.
Announcements: 1) The Arrowhead Grove housing development in San Bernardino (formerly Waterman Gardens) has been identified as 1 of 19 projects that is being recommended for cap-and-trade funding to the Strategic Growth Council (SGC) through their Affordable Housing Sustainable Communities (AHSC) program. This is the only project in the Inland Empire being recommended and totals $20M.
M/S/P: Minutes from June 12, 2018
Keven Porter introduced Harris Koenig, President & CEO, San Antonio Regional Hospital
San Antonio Regional Hospital is a nonprofit acute care, full service medical center. The award-winning hospital, established over 100 years ago, offers a comprehensive range of general medical and surgical services, along with advanced procedures in cardiac care, cancer care, orthopedics, neurosciences, women’s health, maternity, and emergency services.
Although there has been a great deal of consolidation in healthcare, they remain a standalone facility run by a non-compensated Board of Trustees. They have expanded to several satellite facilities in the surrounding community including Rancho San Antonio Medical Plaza in the city of Rancho Cucamonga, Sierra San Antonio Medical Plaza in Fontana, and Eastvale San Antonio Medical Plaza in Eastvale.
Just over a year ago they opened an expansion project that increased their capacity by 50%. The facility added a new 52-bed emergency department and a 92-bed patient tower containing 80 private rooms and 12 critical care beds on its main hospital campus.
They have partnered with the City of Hope, and last year began construction on a two-story structure across the street from their main facility that will house a City of Hope Outpatient Cancer Center on the first floor. The $30 million, 60,000-square-foot ambulatory care center will bring the latest and targeted therapies for cancer immunology and treatment “closer to home”. The new facility, expected to open in 2019, will offer chemotherapy, radiation, and surgical services and allows access to cutting-edge clinical trials to oftentimes weakened patients who might find a drive to City of Hope’s Duarte main campus difficult. The second floor will house San Antonio Regional’s women’s imaging center, with high-tech equipment for mammography scanning and diagnosis.
San Antonio Regional Hospital has an annual budget of approx. $350M and has some 2,500 employees, 500 physicians and 300 volunteers. They work with educators ranging from middle schools thru university levels to create and enhance the “man power pipeline” in medical and affiliated services. Additionally, they are training and reinforcing healthy living in communities and stay engaged with the local municipalities.
Mental health is a complex multi-faceted issue vs. diabetes and heart disease which are often symptoms of problems like obesity. Obesity is a national problem that creates a multitude of medical conditions including diabetes, cardio and respiratory disease and a disturbing increase in joint disease in our youth. In 1990 some 10% of Californian’s were considered morbidly obese, in 2000 that number went to 19% and the most recent study shows us at 25%. San Antonio is part of a joint commission working with other partners including HASC to study and address regional health needs. They are now in phase II of the regional health care needs assessment (aka The Bridging for Health: Improving Community Health Through Innovations in Financing) which is supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Harris Koenig commented that the ACA (Obamacare) has lots of “good” and began a societal mental shift focusing on keeping people healthy. However, it is not sustainable and is unraveling with the current administration. Young, healthy consumers help to subsidize older, sicker patients in the insurance market (spreading the risk). As they pull out of state exchanges, premiums increase. Insurers feeling the uncertainties of the market and their payments are striping down policies, maintaining restrictive networks, limit and deny care, and increase patients’ co-pays, deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs.
Single-payer national health insurance, also known as “Medicare for all,” is a system in which a single public agency organizes health care financing, but the delivery of care remains largely in private hands. It could potentially stabilize costs across the system but there is no clear funding. Currently there are more than 150 different insurance providers that hospitals, clinics and Doctor’s offices must code and invoice for services rendered. In theory, a single payer program would be funded by the savings obtained from replacing today’s profit-oriented, multiple insurance payers with a single streamlined, nonprofit, public payer, and by new taxes. He cited an example where funding the system included a 15% increase in payroll taxes, 2.5% increase in business taxes and a 2.5% increase in sales tax.
We have a large and rapidly aging population needing increasing care. Wellness programs and education are needed as is an increase in community engagement. People aged 60 plus require four times the health care attention that the rest of the population needs. Costs in premiums and/or taxes are virtually guaranteed to increase regardless of the system in place.
A Q & A period followed.
Meeting adjourned 8:35 a.m.