Project Hope moving forward: Adventist Health/Rideout splits needed health care program into two phases

Feb. 21—Adventist Health/Rideout's effort to better serve the needs of those most vulnerable in the Yuba-Sutter community will now be split up into two phases with the first and smallest phase already underway, its president said Tuesday night during a Marysville City Council meeting.

Project Hope, which was first presented to the Yuba City City Council in December 2022, is an effort by the nonprofit health care provider to make medical services available to people such as those experiencing homelessness. Officials with Adventist Health/Rideout previously said that they wanted to establish a medical campus at the former Fremont Hospital along Plumas Street in Yuba City for those services.

"Adventist Health and Rideout is proposing Fremont as the location to stand up a project that will provide a campus style suite of medically necessary services to our most vulnerable populations in the Yuba and Sutter community. The site must be able to sustain multiple beds for an array of different programs and services, along with providing space for significant staffing that will offer wrap-around supportive services," Adventist Health said in a document previously submitted to the city. "... This initial build, construction, and outfitting of this campus-style suite of medically necessary services will be possible through PATH Community Investment dollars and additional braided funding through BHCIP (Behavioral Health Continuum Infrastructure Program)."

Because of the cost of retrofitting and fixing the former Fremont building, the project is heavily dependent on grants and other funding. In May 2023, Chris Champlin, president of Adventist Health/Rideout, said the nonprofit was not able to move forward with initial grant opportunities for the project.

On Tuesday, Champlin shared with Marysville officials that the project did receive some grant funding and that work already was underway to make Project Hope a reality.

Champlin said there are two phases to Project Hope, what he called a "major" and a "minor."

"We got about $2.5 million in grant funds to fund Project Hope minor. Project Hope minor is just an interim step until we start building Project Hope major," he said.

Champlin said for Project Hope minor, a property off Garden Highway in Yuba City has been identified as a potential site, with a lease agreement expected to be signed soon.

"The property needs some renovations. It will be medical recuperative care, a sobering center, and will offer a suite of services to our homeless and ... other residents," Champlin said. "We have until December of this year to get that $2.5 million spent on that project. So we're going fast and hard to get that done."

Champlin said a separate $8 million grant was received in November 2023 to fund the construction and design of Project Hope major, which will be housed at the former Fremont Hospital.

"The $8 million will not cover the complete renovation of that building," Champlin said. "So what we're going to do is we're going to start prioritizing which of the services that we want to offer out of that facility that we can do completely for the $8 million. ... We're probably going to need another $12-$14 million and maybe a little more to complete that whole project."

Champlin said Adventist Health/Rideout has less than two years to spend the $8 million for this specific part of the project.

"We've been working with the city of Yuba City, we've been working with the county supervisors to get that through," Champlin said. "... We have a tremendous amount of community support ... for both projects."

Various officials on both sides of the river have pointed to Project Hope as a dire need.

Because Adventist Health/Rideout Hospital in Marysville has a dedicated emergency room and treats a significant portion of the unhoused community, the expectation with Project Hope is that it will help alleviate the pressure put on the Marysville hospital and be able to better direct those with specific issues to facilities that can better meet those needs.

"If you hear from your constituents how crazy the hospital is today, it's a true story. When I left not too long ago, we had 43 patients in-house who no longer need to be there. So these are patients who have been there for in excess of 10 days. Some of those patients have been here for as long as 200 days, they're simply living at the hospital now because there is no place to go," Champlin said in March 2023. "We have got to build this infrastructure like we have in Project Hope. At the same time, we had 30 people waiting in the emergency department when I left who have orders to admit, but they can't get up to the floor because there's those 43 patients who are living there now. In addition to those 30 patients who have admit orders, we had another four that were pending admit orders, for a total of 34 people who are waiting to be admitted, but they've gotta wait until we can get people out of house. If that's not crazy enough, we had another 30 patients in the ED lobby who have been triaged, but need a bed in the emergency room. We had 16 behavioral health patients waiting because there's no place to put them.

"... It's not that we don't have enough hospital beds, it's that next layer down — it's the subacute, it's the crisis stabilization, it's the long-term care that we really need to free up those patients who are now just living at the hospital."