“On the brink of collapse,” Blythe hospital’s financial crisis could impact local valley hospitals
Athena Jreij
BLYTHE, Calif. (KESQ) – On the “brink of collapse,” that’s how officials from Blythe and those locally describe the condition of Palo Verde Hospital.
They say the hospital is now looking at filing Chapter 9 bankruptcy and has just days of cash flow on hand, after years of mishaps with their billing system. Since May, the hospital has suspended intake of patients and surgeries, with only an ER left.
Those in Blythe say this means residents can’t get care near them, and are having to travel nearly 2 hours and over 100 miles to the Coachella Valley to seek care at hospitals like JFK Memorial Hospital or Eisenhower Health.
“Medically, people will die if it closes. They won’t be able to get emergency treatment, it won’t be available there,” Vice Mayor Johnny Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez says patients are being medically airlifted almost daily.
Palo Verde is now asking for forgiveness on an $8.5 million distressed hospital loan, with state legislators like Assemblyman Jeff Gonzalez asking for an additional $4 million in emergency funding.
Now, La Quinta City Councilman Steve Sanchez, who also serves on the LAFCO commission, worries what this means for our local hospitals.
“We have our own strains we’re already having in the Coachella Valley. If you start adding 20,000 people, even if it’s you know 10% of them have to use the hospital, that is a lot of people. They have to come to Indio or Rancho Mirage or Palm Springs,” Sanchez said.
LAFCO is now looking at other options for Palo Verde, like the dissolving of their board, another health district taking over, or even the county and city of Blythe stepping in to oversee it.
“The goal for every elected official involved in this is to ensure that the residents of Blythe have hospital services. The secondary is we need to protect our hospital districts out here and not strain an already strained hospital in the Coachella Valley,” Sanchez said.
News Channel 3 reached out to local providers like Eisenhower Health and JFK Memorial, who told us it’s not uncommon for residents of Blythe to receive care in the Valley for extreme cases. However, if the hospital’s ER closed, which already provides stabilizing treatment, that would lead to an increase in patients.
It’s a consequence Rodriguez says his residents are already feeling the burden of.
“One man they couldn’t provide the services that he needed here at the hospital, so in the middle of the night they had to go to Eisenhower. It was about 2:00 a.m. when they got there. His wife texted our mayor and said, you got to fix this.”
On Thursday, the Riverside County LAFCO will decide the next steps for the hospital, and examine if dissolving the board into a local healthcare district is possible.
In a statement to News Channel 3, Palo Verde officials said.
“Chapter 9 is the last tool left while we work to fix the financial management challenges that haveso drastically impacted the hospital during the past two years. Our community deserves a functioning hospital. We are doing everything we can to keep it open. Monday night’s board action was an important step since getting the news that we would not be receiving emergency funding from the state of California, the County of Riverside or the City of Blythe. One of the advantages of filing for Chapter 9 bankruptcy is that we can continue to operate the hospital and clinic while continuing to negotiate with our creditors.”
Stick with News Channel 3 as we continue to follow this story.