Difficult Decisions To Ensure Future
Earlier this summer NorthBay Health — like a lot of nonprofit hospitals around the country — found itself in the unenviable position of having to make extremely difficult but necessary decisions to ensure the future of our health care system, which has been serving the Solano County community for 62 years.
As the global pandemic started to ebb, serious economic headwinds created the perfect storm. You know how painful surging gas costs have been to your pocketbook. Imagine similar spikes for already costly, complex medical devices, supplies and medications.
At the same time, the percentage of Medi-Cal and government insured patients NorthBay serves continues to rise, and the non-negotiable reimbursement rates for these patients fall far short of our actual costs to provide those services.
With the rising cost of insurance and health care deductibles, we’ve seen more patients choosing to delay or cancel elective procedures and surgeries.
Add to that the extreme cost of temporary labor, which hospitals around the country have had to rely on to deal with erratic and burgeoning patient populations throughout the pandemic.
The NorthBay Health leadership team has come together to create a multi-part recovery plan to reduce our costs and increase revenue when possible, while at the same time maintaining as many services as possible for the health of our community. It’s a difficult balancing act, to say the least. We’ve had to say goodbye to a number of our colleagues and a handful of programs across the system. Some programs and services have been consolidated, while others may operate on a tighter schedule for the foreseeable future.
We’ve had to be extremely creative in envisioning a leaner, but more sustainable system that will continue to serve our community for years to come. We are realigning our workforce to implement operational efficiencies, reducing and/or modifying the costs of some services through renegotiated contracts and bringing some services in-house; and looking at ways to partner with similar organizations that can serve our patients well.
We ask for your patience as we weather this storm.
Our top priority and guiding light is the safe, compassionate care of our patients.
We will continue to offer 24/7/365 emergency and trauma services at NorthBay Health Medical Center and NorthBay Health VacaValley Hospital. We will continue to offer our primary and many specialty care services at offices in Fairfield and Vacaville. We will continue to partner with amazing physicians, allied health professionals, nurses and more to be able to provide advanced medicine closer to home.
Decisions have been difficult, even heartbreaking, but failure is not an option.
Our goal is to give NorthBay Health a sustainable financial foundation that enables us to keep our promise to the community, to continue to provide care and be your trusted health care partner for many years to come.
To help the community to keep an eye on our recovery plan, we have created a special place on our website. Visit NorthBay.org/community and come back frequently for updates.
B. Konard Jones
President and Chief Executive Officer