The Pajaro Valley Health Care District (PVHCD) Board created an ad hoc committee in March 2024 to explore potential external partnerships to enhance the operations and health equity impact of Watsonville Community Hospital and expand services to our community.
Exploring partnerships is part of PVHCD’s long-term plan to achieve financial sustainability and ensure we can provide hospital services to the community for generations to come. There are three parts of this strategy, as shown here:
With Measure N passed, we will have funds to purchase the hospital land and buildings –and use the annual $3 million in rent savings to reinvest in services. The funds will also allow us to invest in long-overdue improvements like new MRI and CT scanners, replacing aging building infrastructure, and planning for a new Emergency Department, to nearly double the size of the current one. Rather than resting on the laurels of that positive momentum, PVHCD leadership is choosing to use that positive momentum to explore the possibilities that might accelerate it. For example, we could explore partnering with another local healthcare organization to recruit physicians to our area, or to achieve economies of scale by leveraging the strengths of other organizations who have a strategic interest in the success of Watsonville Community Hospital.
As a non-profit, community-owned organization, the PVHCD has sought input from the community throughout this publicly transparent process, and we are grateful to all who have participated. The result is a Request for Proposal that we are excited to release to encourage creative proposals from potential partners. We understand the importance of this community owning its own hospital and we commit to retaining that ownership and control of our local hospital with any new external partnership we may engage in.
The future of healthcare requires collaboration. In the same way healthcare organizations work together to transfer patients between their facilities when it’s in the patient’s best interest, there are ways we can work together to survive in a healthcare world that offers hospitals the slimmest of reimbursements for services. We have an opportunity to accelerate to something special, where we might be able to offer more needed services to our community.
The following information — Appendix A and the detailed maps that are part of Appendix E — are being provided here as separate files, so they may be reviewed in more detail. These appendices in the RFP document had to be reduced in size to fit the document formatting and may therefore be difficult to read.
On September 17, the Pajaro Valley Health Care District leadership hosted a virtual Q&A Session to give organizations responding to the RFP an opportunity to ask questions. Click the button below to view questions and answers.
