Interest grows to ‘revive’ closed Madera hospital. What could its future be?

As concerns grow with the closure of Madera County’s only adult acute care hospital, a local lawmaker is making tweaks to a piece of legislation aimed at helping struggling hospitals ahead of the bill’s first hearing next week.

Various local stakeholders and leaders, such as UC Merced’s chancellor, are also becoming interested in helping find ways to reopen the hospital, which closed its doors in January. Assemblywoman Esmeralda Soria, D-Fresno, plans to meet with the president of the University of California system in coming weeks to pitch the idea of a teaching hospital.

Meanwhile, Soria said she is making changes to the language in Assembly Bill 412, which she introduced in February, and is working with the governor’s office on the amendments.

The bill, Soria said, would establish a state emergency loan program for distressed hospitals either at the verge of closing or those with a plan to reopen. The tweaks will reflect that the loans would be forgivable if a viable plan demonstrates that a hospital can stay open for a certain amount of time. The specific criteria, she said, hasn’t been established yet.

The loan would end up turning into a grant, she said.

“What we intend to do is, we want to make sure these hospitals stay open, and that it doesn’t become a burden that they have to figure out how to pay that loan off if it would make their situation worse,” Soria told The Bee. “We want to make sure that there’s sustainability so if the hospital can demonstrate that they can stay open — we again don’t have the criteria for how long — then the loan can be forgivable.”

The bill was supposed to have its first hearing on March 28, then postponed to April 11 and now the hearing in the Assembly Health Committee will be pushed to April 18 to allow for the changes in the language to be completed.

Soria said an urgency clause has been included in the bill.

There’s still no specific timeline on how soon the program would become available. But the Madera hospital, for example, still stands to benefit from the program if the legislation were to pass, which Soria hopes would help entice a potential buyer to reopen the hospital.

The state Legislature, Soria said, already allocated $5 million in its last budget cycle for the Madera hospital, which was already struggling financially. Money through the emergency loan program would provide additional funding.

“That earmarked ($5 million) it’s still in the budget, but it can’t be tapped into until there is a plan to reopen,” she said. “The goal is that by having these $5 million, and access to this new program that we are establishing, that it would help us incentivize an entity to essentially buy it (the Madera hospital) and have a plan to reopen.”

Soria said she’s working closely with Sen. Anna Caballero, who also represents Madera. Caballero’s district also covers a portion of the central coast, where Soria said there’s another hospital that’s struggling financially.

“There’s a lot of interest from the governor’s office, and we’ve been working very closely with their office over the last couple of weeks,” she said. “I feel very confident that we are going to be successful in creating this emergency loan program for hospitals in distressed situations.”

Other efforts to ‘revive’ Madera hospital; can it become a teaching hospital?

Soria said over the last couple of decades, there have been efforts to bring a medical school to the central San Joaquin Valley and housing it at UC Merced.

A teaching hospital, she said, would also be needed to help train the future doctors.

“I said, ‘What an incredible opportunity would it be... since we have this now-empty hospital, and we know it’s very expensive to build a hospital, that this hospital could potentially be that hub to teach the future doctors of UC Merced,’” she said.

Soria said several stakeholders have been supportive of the idea. She said she has already met with UC Merced Chancellor Juan Sanchez Munoz, and other people from UCSF, “who recognize that this is an opportunity, but nothing has been developed as of now.” Soria plans to meet with Michael V. Drake, the president of the University of California system, in coming weeks to pitch the idea.

“We recognize that there’s a doctor shortage in the Valley, and a need to really train those future doctors and we need it here in the Valley,” she said. ”That’s the pitch that I would make, and so, we shall see. I have no indication whether that’s something that they would support because I have yet to talk to them.”

Sanchez Munoz seemed supportive of the idea.

“While we look to continue to build our medical education program in partnership with UCSF and UCSF-Fresno, we are considering a wide array of options and decisions for the near and longer terms,” he said in a statement to The Bee. “We share the community’s deep concerns about the closure of Madera Community Hospital, and are of course willing to join with others in taking an active look at any effort to revive it.”