Santa Clara County never planned to buy Regional Medical Center in East San Jose. The Board of Supervisors wasn’t looking to take on more health care responsibilities. They had already saved three failing hospitals five years ago and ranked as the second-largest public health and hospital system in California. But the situation was dire.
Make no mistake, people were going to die. Ambulances would’ve had to travel further when every minute matters. Residents would’ve been forced to endure longer wait times for critical care because immediate treatment wouldn’t be available. County supervisors knew it, as did the doctors and nurses in our overwhelmed public health system.
Then the county learned it was getting a long overdue reimbursement of Federal Emergency Management Agency funds for COVID-19 health care expenses. The windfall enabled officials to broker a $175 million deal with HCA Healthcare, the hospital’s owner, to buy Regional.
The timing was nothing short of a miracle, as HCA continued to cut life-saving hospital services in a part of San Jose that for decades has been fighting to level the playing field — be it health care, education or housing.
The county could have used those millions to help shore up its $250 million deficit or allocate those dollars to unfunded health care mandates from the state, including CARE Court and conservatorship laws that now require locked acute care facilities for substance use disorders.
But this time would be different.
After the California Department of Public Health and Attorney General Rob Bonta refused to step in, county officials weren’t dissuaded. They began talking to HCA, determined not to let Regional head down the same path as San Jose Medical Center, which closed in 2004 after HCA methodically stripped its essential services. The county was not going to let East San Jose residents lose their hospital or any more critical services. In fact, the plan is to restore previously cut services, such as the obstetrics department and maternity ward. This health care inequity would be reversed.
It’s going to take time to repair the damage done to the hospital, to systemically restore needed services that make people healthier and life better when proper care is accessible. Just knowing Regional will eventually be whole again is like taking a patient off ECMO, a machine that helps a person breathe, when the patient doesn’t need it anymore.
County officials don’t need HCA anymore. They made the right move, the only move left and they knew it.
They fought for the community and East San Jose residents can finally exhale knowing their hospital will no longer be owned by a for-profit company.
Moryt Milo is an editor at San José Spotlight. Contact Moryt at [email protected] or follow her at @morytmilo on X, formerly known as Twitter. Catch up on her monthly editorials here.
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