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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

HOSPITAL RX

When Roger E. Seaver left Northridge Hospital Medical Center to take the reins of Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital in late 2000, the Santa Clarita medical facility was in a time of turmoil, to say the least. After years of financial problems, surging demand and unforeseen costs, the hospital board elected to put the independent facility on the selling block, but no buyers came forward. The hospital was eventually forced into bankruptcy. To turn the operation around, Seaver rebuilt hospital finances, emerged from protection and slowly start expanding. The scheme has largely worked and the hospital is currently in a growth phase that includes a new emergency room, a flurry of construction and a 25-year master plan that has been in the works for more than two years. But the plans have done little to quash concerns in the community about the hospital’s safety and its expansion plans. Seaver, who also served as an executive of Glendale Memorial Hospital, sat down with the Business Journal to talk about the state of health care and the future of the sole acute care hospital in the Santa Clarita Valley. Q: When you came here six years ago, what did you find? A: It was a community hospital struggling with some short-term financial problems that overwhelmed the hospital. It was really an accumulation of problems. Q: What had caused that? A: Well, the triggering event was probably the Northridge earthquake of ’94. The hospital did all the repairs from the earthquake and also upgraded the facility to meet new seismic codes. That was funded out-of-pocket by the hospital and the cost far exceeded their ability to fund it. It hurt the hospital. They had to incur additional debt and on top of that, they faced financial problems primarily from managed care, contracting and things like that. Q: What was your plan? A: The basic part of the plan was to trim losing operations that weren’t core to the mission of the hospital. Most importantly, we eliminated all of the high-risk management contracts that were in place and restructured some business arrangements that had been detrimental to the hospital. That wrapped up after Chapter 11 proceedings; we exited in 2003. Q: And now you’re in a growth phase. Tell me about how that’s coming together. A: Even during our reorganization, with the hospital stabilized, we didn’t have capital. We happened to be in a community where we have a very strong foundation for philanthropic support. And they enthusiastically took on different projects a region-wide breast cancer center the Sheila R. Veloz Breast Imaging Center, which was built and opened while we were in financial reorganization a major expansion of the emergency room (which opened in December) and plans for the first cath lab here at the hospital. We are about to break ground on the cath lab and then follow that with a dedicated cath lab for cardiac services over the next two years. We’re also upgrading all of our imaging services and are in the design phase for a critical care unit. Additional operating rooms are also on the drawing board and we’re in the initial phases of moving over to electronic records. Our 25-year master plan will hopefully go to the City Council in May for the final hearing and the approval process this summer. Q: Do you find you have a more committed donor base because Henry Mayo is the only medical center in the Santa Clarita Valley? A: It’s a very generous community, but the large dollars come down to really dedicated people who want to give substantial sums. Being the single hospital is probably helpful, but I don’t think it’s a major part. But many of the community leaders have successful businesses and have been pioneers in the development of this valley and want to see the full infrastructure of this valley be what it is. Q: Does not having a lot of competition A: Well, I don’t assume we don’t have a lot of competition, I assume we do. Physically, this Valley hasn’t been able to support more than one hospital from a need standpoint, at least up until this point in time. So you don’t have an inpatient facility here. But the outpatient market and the referral market is very competitive, with the San Fernando Valley in particular. It’s a very competitive market in all respects, even though we’re the only hospital in this valley. In a sense, no one competes for emergency care. If it’s a true emergency, you’ve got to get to the closest emergency room and this is the only one you can come to in this valley at this time. It’s a monopoly or a burden, depending on how you look at it. Q: How is it a burden? A: The emergency room has to take everyone. We’re fortunate enough that the people who live in the community are either insured or are capable of paying their health care bills. Q: Providence has staked a claim up here A: It’s a targeted area for them. Q: How do you address that? A: Continue to stay focused on our mission to serve the Santa Clarita Valley, develop the services that are needed, provide excellent care and continue to meet the needs in a better way than anyone else. Q: Henry Mayo recently ranked poorly on patient satisfaction in a study by the California Hospital Assessment and Reporting Taskforce, which surveyed patients after they left hospital. How do you see that study? A: Let me say this: we believe in transparency. We also believe the quality indicators are fair. And we’re not on target. We have to work on that. We’re working hard and on-target to demonstrate our consistent quality over time. Q: There has historically been a notion that Henry Mayo wasn’t as safe as other area hospitals. Is that the case? Well, I wasn’t here all that time. I believe your neighborhood hospitals the San Fernando Valley hospitals have always targeted the outlying hospitals as lower quality. I believe that the poor quality image is a promoted image because the hospitals in the Valley like to take care of patients coming from the Santa Clarita Valley. The truth is, outcome studies are the only true measure in healthcare today. And to the best of my knowledge, this hospital has never been demonstrated as having poor quality based on an outcome study. Q: Did you expect a negative reaction to the hospital master plan? A: I think neighborhood resistance was expected. There really hasn’t been a lot of master planning in this community for infrastructure and major institutions like this. The most common thing is this community is a new development, which is built all at once and changes whatever that neighborhood is overnight. Most people are still thinking our master plan is something that’s going to happen all at once. It’s not; it’s an attempt to plan what the maximum capacity of this campus is in a long enough time period so that good health care planning can happen, not only for this campus but for the rest of the community. I am not surprised there are some neighborhood concerns, but I am a little surprised and disappointed in the opposition to such a needed part of our infrastructure. I think people significantly underestimate the need as well as the difficulty in delivering hospital services to a community. Q: Then why is there so much concern ? A: Opposition grabs the headlines. There were some real issues. We’ve mitigated most of those. But at the end of the day, the trauma center needs a heliport. Helicopters make noise. It’s made noise here for 20-plus years. We’re only putting it back in operation. The height of the building is needed for effective use of the land and efficiency factors. Everybody is concerned about traffic (but) the analysis indicates that the increase in traffic caused by a full development of this site is almost all mitigated by the mitigation we’ll be doing on campus. Q: How would you like this institution to look in 20 years? A: This institution has the ability to be the premiere community hospital serving the Santa Clarita Valley in a way that few communities can enjoy: community-owned, governed by leaders of the community, responding to the needs of the community and managed in a way that is meeting the majority of local health care needs in a way that is sensitive to the population and performed in a high quality manner. Those are all the attributes of the finest hospitals in the United States. And this community has the ability to do this. SNAPSHOT: Roger E. Seaver Title: President and CEO, Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital Age: 58 Career Turning Point: “Very early in my career, I fell in love with the industry because I could contribute to business success with a corporate model that had at its core a mission of helping people.” Personal: Married to Lina; two sons, Jay and Ryan, and a daughter, Krystle.

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