A shake-up in the health care picture is expected to ease overcrowding at public hospitals in the South Bay.
If all goes according to plan, three South Bay health care institutions, including O’Connor Hospital in San Jose, are about to change hands and that should expand health care for the people who can least afford it.
Worries that it might close one day, the financially struggling O’Connor Hospital is no longer on life support.
By purchasing O’Connor Hospital and two other fiscally unsound hospitals, Saint Louise in Gilroy and De Paul Health Center in Morgan Hill, Santa Clara County will have solved its over-crowding problems at the county-run valley medical center says County Executive Jeff Smith.
As part of a bankruptcy reorganization, owner Verity Health Systems accepted the county’s lone $235 million bid.
Acquiring the three facilities will add some 456 beds, doubling capacity countywide and it means South County residents, fearful of losing their local hospitals, will instead see expanded services.
The deal looks good on paper.
The county hopes to succeed where Verity Health failed because public hospitals receive more reimbursement per patient than private institutions because of the way Medi-Cal is set up under the Affordable Care Act.
As for the roughly 1,700 people who work at O’Connor and the other two facilities?
They will become county employees.
The county’s bid is expected to be finalized later this month and the county would then take over operations early in Feb.
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