Acknowledging Bakersfield Doesn’t Need Two Burn Centers, Adventist Closes Its Facility
Adventist Health Bakersfield had maintained that it wanted to remain open despite having broken ties with the Grossman Burn Center.
The Bakersfield Californian:
Adventist Health Bakersfield Shutters Burn Center Citing Competition
Two years after breaking ties with Grossman Burn Center, which established a facility at Bakersfield Memorial Hospital last year, Adventist Health Bakersfield shut the doors of its burn center this month, hospital officials announced. At the time Adventist Health Bakersfield broke ties with the Los Angeles-based burn center, officials said they would maintain their burn center, despite having a new competitor in town. On Monday, Adventist Health officials conceded that Bakersfield is too small a town for two comprehensive burn centers. Most comparably sized counties don’t even have one. (Pierce, 11/7)
In other news —
East Bay Times:
Supervisors Take First Step To Dissolve East County’s Los Medanos Healthcare District
Claiming the county can administer the Pittsburg Health Clinic more cheaply and efficiently, Contra Costa County supervisors have started the process to dissolve the Los Medanos Community Healthcare District.
Supervisors voted 5-0 Tuesday to apply to the Contra Costa Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) to begin the dissolution process, and to then transfer all of the Los Medanos district’s assets (and debts) to the county. This could be the death blow for a health care district that has long outlived the Los Medanos Community Hospital it once operated, and has survived at least two other dissolution efforts since the Pittsburg hospital closed in 1994. (Richards, 11/7)
East Bay Times:
Baby Strollers Lead Push To Save Berkeley’s Alta Bates Hospital
About 150 people, many pushing strollers, rallied Sunday to protest the closing — or otherwise put, the repurposing — of Alta Bates Summit Medical Center. “Save the Birthplace of the East Bay,” they chanted, invoking the hospital’s historic role as an area maternity center. Proponents of maintaining Alta Bates’ current level of service, which also includes an emergency room, have warned that something less, coupled with the 2015 closing of Doctors Medical Center in San Pablo, would reduce a swath of the East Bay from Crockett to Berkeley to a “health care desert.” (Lochner, 11/7)