A California bill that would restrict the state attorney general from imposing what the authors called "unreasonable, unworkable, and unnecessary conditions" on rural hospitals seeking to stay open by merging with, or selling to, another hospital was pulled from committee.
Senate Bill 774, slated to be heard in the Senate Health Committee on Wednesday was pulled by its authors Sen. Brian Jones, R-San Diego, and Sen. Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield. The entire California Senate Republican caucus co-authored the bill.
Jones
Madera Community Hospital, is one of several hospitals in California, that has been
Rob Bonta, the state attorney general, has to sign off on mergers involving not-for-profit hospitals in California to ensure the facilities aren't converted to for-profit hospitals that limit access to healthcare for the state's poorer residents.
Bonta
Reimbursements from Medi-Cal, the state's Medicaid healthcare problem, have been cited as the primary reason for the failed merger.
Bonta had conditionally approved sale of the hospital to Trinity in December. He
Madera was a 106-bed general acute care hospital, and the only hospital operating in Madera County serving the general population.
The hospital, along with three rural health clinics that it operated, closed at the end of December, with the hospital board attributing the closure to costs and losses incurred as a result of the pandemic, as well as inadequate government and health plan rates for the services it provided, according to a Senate analysis of the bill. Madera began negotiations with Trinity in August, and the larger hospital system called off the deal a week after the AG's conditional approval was granted, the analysis said.
The California Hospital Association is requesting $1.5 billion as part of the 2023-24 budget process as a one-time emergency infusion of cash for California's hospitals, to be proportionally disbursed based on Medi-Cal utilization.
CHA has come out in support of the bill saying it "would put some guardrails around the conditions that the AG may impose on hospitals that seek to partner."
Health Access California has opposed the bill, saying "it would severely limit the authority of California's AG to protect access to, and affordability of, hospital services provided by most hospitals in California."