VICTORY FOR FAIRMONT!

VOTE HEALTH ORGANIZES TO SAVE FAIRMONT HOSPITAL

Alameda County owns a great deal of valuable land in the southern part of the County. They have sold off some of these properties to dot-com companies at a high profit. These profits were put into an account known as the Surplus Property Development Trust Fund, created in February 1998. The County Administrators' Office reports the Fund (which has been named the "Emerald Fund") has a balance today of $133.4 million of which $14.3 million is interest earnings.

The County is proposing to allocate some of these funds to capital needs. The Board established a policy of directing the interest earnings for these uses only:

• County capital projects
  


• Debt service for capital projects or
  


• Reinvestment to capital

Up to now, the Board hasn't allocated any of the funds. They have all been reinvested in capital, waiting for the development of a Five Year Capital Improvement Program.

"SUPER JAIL" OR SUPER HEALTH CARE?
Competition for these funds will be intense. The County has identified $1.2 BILLION in capital needs for its county-owned facilities. From sources including Emerald Fund annual interest, the County has identified $461 million in county funds and prospective bonds to address these capital needs.

The Sheriff is trying to gobble up the lion's share of the funds with proposed controversial new construction. He wants funds to build a new "Command Center" creating a regional criminal justice hub in San Leandro. Even more hotly disputed is his plan to use the funds for a new and expanded Juvenile Justice facility to incarcerate more youths. Alameda County's plan to replace the 299-bed juvenile detention facility in San Leandro with a 450-bed (down from the originally planned 540 bed) facility in Dublin has met with community outrage.

The new facility, dubbed the "Super Jail," will cost Alameda County $175 million, $33.2 million of which will be covered by a construction grant from the Board of Corrections. On July 28th, a thousand youth and social activists rallied in Berkeley to oppose the Super Jail (see Berkeley Daily Planet story)

A HISTORY OF NEGLECT - $20 MILLION OF HOSPITAL FUNDS DIVERTED TO SHERIFF!!
Vote Health believes that the Emerald Fund should be allocated to address long neglected health care and other human services' capital needs. One of the advantages of Vote Health's long history of work in Alameda County is our long collective memory! Back in FY92-93, when the County was experiencing budgetary problems, a new source of funding, Disproportionate Share Hospital funding, became available to help strengthen hospitals serving the poor. These funds were used by county hospitals around the state to shore up their aging facilities and modernize their equipment, as well as to expand care. But this was not the case in our County! Caving in to the demands of the Sheriff, Alameda County took $20 million of the DSH allocation intended for Highland and Fairmont Hospitals, and allocated it to the Sheriff's Department! This tragic history helps explain why the infrastructure of our county hospitals is so outmoded and their capital needs so dire. These funds have never been repaid to the Medical Center, even when the County budget picture improved! Last year, the Medical Center presented the County with a plan for addressing its capital needs totaling $84 million. The County finally released $29 million in previously committed funds which will partially address the Medical Center's identified needs, but this represents only a portion of the total need for upgrading ACMC's aging medical equipment and modernizing its Information Systems.

Vote Health is mounting a campaign to rally community support to convince the Board of Supervisors that health care is healthier than preparing to lock up more youth. Specifically, we are concerned that the combination of aging and inadequate buildings and cutbacks in services at the Fairmont Hospital Campus in San Leandro put the entire campus and its many services at risk. This vital medical center includes a skilled nursing facility (SNF), inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation services such as physical and speech therapy, a neuro-respiratory unit, a pharmacy and many clinics, used by the county's un/underinsured population. This campus had 43,500 outpatient visits and 49,000 inpatient days last year alone, but the buildings are dilapidated and inadequate, actually hindering the delivery of quality health care.

If the financial investment isn't made soon, Fairmont's future is in grave jeopardy. We strongly suspect that new construction at Fairmont makes more sense than trying to upgrade the current facilities, which are lacking in multiple ways. The first steps must be a careful evaluation of what is there and what must be done to upgrade, compared to what it would cost to replace the buildings with ones that are consistent with practicing medicine in the 21st century.

ARCHIVE OF OTHER LETTERS AND POSITION PAPERS

Neuro Respiratory Unit
Vote Health believes it is the duty of the county to continue providing care for the patients on the Neuro-Respiratory Unit, who are among the most vulnerable in the system... (continue)