A California lawmaker recently introduced legislation designed to keep the state’s small and rural hospitals from closing as they work to meet seismic safety compliance requirements.
State law has set a timeline for hospitals to comply with seismic safety standards, which require retrofitting or rebuilding hospitals so that they can remain operable in the event of an earthquake. Should a hospital be unable to meet these safety standards by January 1, 2030, it will be banned from providing acute care service.
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The bill proposed by Rep. Jim Wood (D-Healdsburg) would require California’s Department of Health Care Access and Administration (HCAI) to provide grant funding to small and rural hospitals so they can achieve compliance amid times of severe financial distress. The proposal would also allow for the compliance requirement to be delayed in some cases.
The bill would require the HCAI to give first priority to grants for single- and two-story acute care hospitals in rural areas with fewer than 80 acute care beds and an annual revenue of $75 million or less.
If HCAI does not have funds available to help a rural hospital meet seismic safety requirements and the estimated cost of compliance exceeds the larger of $1 million or 2% of hospital revenue, the bill states that the hospital should not be required to meet the 2030 requirements until funds are available. Additionally, if a financially distressed district hospital is more than 30 minutes or 30 miles from the nearest hospital, it would also not be required to meet the 2030 requirements until state funds are available.
“These hospitals are literally lifelines to Californians in our more rural communities and most do not have the financial resources nor the ability to acquire funding from other sources to meet seismic requirements,” Wood said in a statement. “There has to be a way to move forward to keep these hospitals open as they work to meet these standards.”
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Across the country, rural hospitals’ dismal financial circumstances are becoming more and more worrisome. About 30% of all rural hospitals are at risk of closing in the near future, according to a recent report from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform.
Across California’s rural land, there is often only one hospital in the county. Closing these hospitals would greatly decrease the community’s access to care, leading to poor health outcomes and potentially avoidable deaths, Wood pointed out in the bill.
When a rural hospital closes, members of the community must travel far distances for emergency or inpatient care. And in many rural communities, the hospital is the only place people can go to get laboratory or imaging work done. The hospital might also be the only source of primary care for the community.
Shuttering these hospitals as they work to comply with seismic safety standards would be a massive blow to rural Americans’ healthcare access, Wood’s bill stated.
Photo: StockFinland, Getty Images
