CEO Messages

In an area as large as Hospital Council’s, which stretches from the Oregon border to Bakersfield, it’s not always easy to find common ground. Your concerns are often vastly different — rural, suburban, and urban communities don’t always have the same needs. But lately, there’s a common thread that has united nearly all hospitals in not just our region but throughout the state — financial issues that are significant, are emergent, and are not going away anytime soon.

We are just barely three months into 2023, and the pressures on your hospitals are continuing to mount. Financial challenges. Delays in payments by health plans. Workforce shortages. $25 minimum wage proposals.  

Last week, I had the chance to meet with a group of public health leaders and hear firsthand about what’s on their minds.

This week, Hospital Council holds its first board meeting of the year. 

The new year has brought with it a series of challenges. 

It’s hard to believe, but it is already mid-December and the new year is just around the corner. As I look back on 2022, it feels like it was just yesterday that hospitals were dealing with the impacts of the omicron surge. Now, with some hospitals at or near capacity and emergency department and inpatient rates equal to or higher than what you experienced during omicron, your hospitals have — once again — stepped up to meet the health care needs of Californians as COVID-19, flu, and RSV collide to create a “tripledemic.”  

Earlier this week, the Hospital Council Board of Trustees held its first in-person meeting since January 2020. While the board continued to meet regularly yet virtually throughout the pandemic, it was great to have both our current board members and our new incoming board members in-person for this occasion.

In the South Bay, affordable housing is so scarce that one hospital is bussing some employees in from the Central Valley, often putting them up at hotels during the week.