By KATHERINE PETERSEN
The El Camino Hospital District Board voted unanimously Nov. 26 for a settlement that returns El Camino Hospital to district control by the first of the year. Camino Healthcare, a private nonprofit corporation, has run the hospital since 1992 and is expected to sign off on the agreement soon.
The Camino Medical Group-- made up of physicians from the Sunnyvale Medical Clinic and Shoreline Medical Group in Mountain View who were allied with Camino Healthcare for the past four years--has not yet agreed to the settlement.
The settlement requires the district to provide a $9 million line of credit and $4.7 million in cash to Camino Medical Group to establish itself as a separate entity.It ends lawsuits filed among the three parties and calls for the resignation of all members of the Camino Healthcare Board of Directors. And it provides for a transfer of $270 million of hospital assets--including just under $100 million cash from Camino Healthcare--to the district, down $10 million since assets came under Camino Healthcare control in 1992, said board member Mark O'Connor.
Three board members will sit on the El Camino Hospital board, which will now meet publicly. Those board members are yet to be chosen.
Camino Healthcare will remain an entity to provide nonprofit tax benefits to the district, and its status will be reevaluated within a year or so, O'Connor said.
The district has no plans to cut staff at the hospital, O'Connor said. Hospital patients won't notice many physical differences at the facility, but may see a change in the atmosphere, he added.
"I think patients will find a brighter, cheerier crowd of nurses and support workers. I think they've taken the brunt of cutbacks, and their morale has been down. We will make sure that operations of the hospital never again subsidize physicians at the expense of nurses," he said, referring to an estimated $1 million per month Camino Healthcare subsidized Camino Medical Group physicians. Hospital losses over the past four years should be attributed to these subsidies rather than nurses' salaries, O'Connor said.
The hospital lost $17.7 million in 1995, which was offset by $8 million in interest from investments, Victoria Emmons, a member of the district's transition team.
"Any kind of change of this magnitude is never easy, but our intention is to make the transition as smooth as possible. I think the biggest difference people will see is that they have a voice," she said.
As chief executive officer of the hospital, Richard Warren will oversee the day-to-day operations of the hospital and advise the district board.
Incumbent district board members Dr. Dominick Curatola and Dr. Paul Hoar and new board member Dr. Edward Bough were sworn in at the board's Dec. 5 meeting.
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, December 11, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.