Palo Verde Hospital in Blythe announced Wednesday that it would be temporarily closing its Community Clinic while seeking to recruit and hire a qualified healthcare provider.
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“Hospital staff are making every reasonable effort to contact patients with upcoming appointments scheduled this week to notify them of the change,” a release announcing the closure said. “During the temporary closure, patients are being referred to local healthcare providers to help ensure continuity of care.”
The release said the hospital was “working diligently” to recruit a provider and resume operations at the clinic, which provides basic outpatient care for the community.
The hospital’s emergency department remains open and will continue to provide emergency medical care to the community without interruption. Additionally, the hospital’s lab and imaging divisions will remain open.
The news of the closure came one week after the Palo Verde Healthcare District Board of Directors voted unanimously to extend the management services agreement with the county, allowing Riverside University Health System (RUHS) to continue its day-to-day operations of the rural facility through late November, with options to extend the agreement through next February.
“We need to continue stabilizing the hospital operations, and we need to build on the improvements that you’re going to get to see tonight in this building, and we need to develop recommendations,” Michelle DeArmond, Palo Verde Hospital’s interim executive director, said of the agreement at the hospital’s July 30 open house. “This is an opportunity for us to take a little more time to stabilize and assess and to pull that together.”
As part of that agreement, the county has loaned the hospital a total of $4.45 million: a $1 million bridge loan and a $3.45 million loan to allow the hospital to unlock millions in state funding.
County Executive Officer Jeff Van Wagenen said the county has not provided any additional funding for the hospital, and expected that the loans would be paid back.
“At some point, if possible, we’d like to get paid back,” he said in an interview with The Riverside Record. “We’re still keeping our eye on those dollars, but we’re not paying additional general fund money in the current fiscal year.”
Roughly 200 community members braved the heat to attend the open house and ice cream social where hospital leadership spoke about the many changes to the facility, both physical and operational, to improve services.
“When you come in now, it’s already an hour less [wait] than what it was, and it’s coming down,” Leah Patterson, chief nursing officer for RUHS and interim chief nursing officer at Palo Verde Hospital, said. “The physicians are seeing the patients, I believe she said about 15 minutes quicker than they were before, and so the experience hopefully is they come in, they get triaged, and then they’re brought right back, especially when we have an empty bed, and then the physician is just right there.”
The importance of the hospital was highlighted during a press conference when Blythe resident Dakota Webb spoke about a recent experience with his daughter, who was at the hospital when she had a seizure.
“Immediately after she had her seizure, I couldn’t help but think if this place was not here, what I would have done,” he said, noting that the facility’s doctors helped connect him with a neurologist. “They did so much for me in such a trying time, and it’s in such a great place.”
The same question of what would happen if the hospital closed was top of mind of Moncerrat Guillen, a lifelong Blythe resident who has relied on the hospital to treat her young children when they get hurt.
“Recently, my child burned herself accidentally,” she said. “Imagine having to drive all the way two hours, the pain that would have caused.”
But for many of those who came out to the open house, including Mayor Joseph “Joey” DeConinck, the goal remains for the hospital to fully reopen all departments including a maternity ward and operation rooms.
“It needs to get back open up, like a full 100% hospital,” he said. “We have our emergency room operating now, but it needs to get everything happening like we used to have.”
When asked if that was something RUHS was looking at, DeArmond said future recommendations would be made based on data and would balance community needs with financial realities.
“We don’t have the answers to all of that, but that’s the kind of thing we’re looking at to figure out really what’s the best fit for the community, for the need, for the size and, of course, looking at the dollars,” she said. “We were brought in to stabilize and really focus on the [emergency department], but obviously as we make recommendations, those recommendations will take a look at what we think is the right size, the right fit.”
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