14 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY MAY 25-31, 2023 www.montereycountyweekly.com The last six months have been rocky for the Soledad Community Health Care District, after CEO Ida Lopez Chan made a series of cuts in employee hours and benefits that left workers angry and disillusioned. The hours are now restored, Chan told the district board on April 27, and the district is working on restoring employee retirement accounts after payments were wrongly stopped temporarily. Unfortunately for the district—which currently has no reserves—an old debt is continuing to come back to haunt it. The budget issue that prompted the belt-tightening dates back to 2015, when under a previous CEO a decision was made—based on a recommendation by district auditors because cash was short—to accept an advance payment of Medi-Cal claims, a common practice called a Prospective Payment System, or PPS, where payment is made for future claims on a predetermined, fixed rate. If there is money left over after the claims are finalized, the agency that accepted the PPS must pay the extra back to the California Department of Health Care Services within 60 days, or pay 7 percent interest on the amount until it is repaid. “This is not untraditional. There are a lot of other rural health care districts that have utilized the same type of support,” Chan says. The district carried the growing debt while it was taking on expansion with the building of the Women’s Health Clinic, using a $3 million construction loan. (The clinic opened in November 2020.) The PPS was a way to have cash when money was tight, Chan told the board in April, but the debt continued to grow. She estimated the interest was costing the district approximately $1.1 million annually. In order to cover one year of interest payments, she said, “we have to bank at least $83,000 a month in cash in order to break even, just to pay off that debt.” If they don’t, there will be new cuts in the future. “You can tell, we only have $998,000 in cash, we need $1.1 million. If that payment came due today, we don’t have enough to pay it,” Chan said. Boardmember Max Schell chimed in, “And we have no reserves.” Chan says a payment did come due for 2019 on Nov. 15, but they came up short by over $400,000. (There is a two- to three-year lag in the state collecting repayments.) The state allowed the district to pay it off at $35,000 a month. That situation, combined with having to pay more for temporary staffing in the face of an employee shortage during Covid, added to financial stress. “We had to make some difficult decisions in order to keep the cash flowing,” Chan says. “Now everyone is back at 100 percent, so we made good on our promise to get them back there.” A new auditor’s report providing more light on the district’s finances is scheduled to be heard during a board meeting at 4pm on Thursday, May 25. The board meets inside the Creekside Room at the Eden Valley Care Center, 612 Main St., Soledad. Pay Back A rural health care district in Soledad is playing catch-up to deal with an old debt. By Pam Marino An old debt has been plaguing the Soledad Community Health Care District, which owns and operates the Soledad Medical Clinic, Eden Valley Care Center and Women’s Health Center. NEWS “We had to make some difficult decisions to keep the cash flowing.” DANIEL DREIFUSS H A N D M A D E & RETRO GROOVE U P C Y C L E D M A R K E T SATURDAY JUNE 17, 2023 2-7 PM IN COLLABORATION WITH ARTSY CHICA UTOPIA 310 FOURTH STREET SAN JUAN BAUTISTA CA 95045 #RETROGROOVESJB Monterey One Water • ReGen Monterey • Southern Monterey Bay Dischargers Group GREEN CART Food scraps without a bag TRASH Cooking oil and grease ClogBusters.org Good kitchen habits protect the environment & public health from sewer overflows! www.ClogBusters.org
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