Variety essential for health board

To run a fine hospital, you need not only medical know-how, but also business and management skills, especially a strong talent for getting a large group of people to work smoothly and effectively together to ensure the very best care.

Hospital administrators are rarely doctors; instead, they are most often people who are skilled in creating an optimal environment for doctors, as well as nurses, where these people can make the most of their specialized skills in doing their best work for their patients.

So it is with the Petaluma Health Care District board. To be the most effective for our community, we need a variety of backgrounds: not only medical people, but people with management and business skills, and above all people who care deeply about our community.

That is my concern with regard to the upcoming election for the Petaluma Health Care District. Among the candidates on the ballot we have three doctors who are running, not as individuals, but together, as a special interest group, in an effort to take over the district board.

Let me be clear here. Doctors are wonderful people. They save our lives. They bring patients to our local hospital and enable it to thrive. They are frequently very fine human beings, and we would be in a terrible fix without them. In the past, we have had doctors serve on the Petaluma Health Care District board with great distinction. Dr. Herb Newberger is just one example.

However, as an existing member of the district board who is not up for election this time, I am concerned that the public may innocently elect all three doctors running as a special interest group for the three open seats. There are two reasons this is worrisome.

First is the track record of the local physicians? group, SSCMG, under the leadership of Dr. Bob Ostroff, one of the doctors running for election. Where has this physicians? group placed its primary emphasis in recent years? Primarily to partnering in a business venture with Cirrus, a Texas for-profit company, to put an ambulatory surgery center in Petaluma that would have competed directly with our hospital and seriously damaged our hospital?s long-term viability. Fortunately, this proposition failed to happen, not because the Petaluma Health Care District board opposed it, but simply because it was a risky business venture that fell apart of its own accord, as have many other attempts by Cirrus in the North Bay.

The physicians? group has also devoted its energies to opposing a management agreement for the operating room at Petaluma Valley Hospital that has the potential to be highly beneficial to surgeons, patients and hospital alike. They have taken the position that the agreement was illegal and forced the health care district to use public funds to pay for outside attorneys to give an independent opinion. The outcome, thousands of dollars later? The physicians? group was wrong. Let?s look at another example of recent SSCMG activities. The leadership of the physicians? group this year made wild and unsubstantiated public statements accusing the management of our hospital of ?plundering? the institution for their own purposes. As a result, the district was forced into spending public funds yet again to hire independent consultants to review the hospital?s critical financial practices. And the outcome? Yet again, the physicians? group was wrong.

Finally, perhaps the most disturbing issue about the three doctors? running as a special interest group in this election is that, if successful, we would have a district board consisting of four physicians and one ordinary citizen. That is not the mix of skills for success, nor a reflection of our community. Fortunately, there are other people on the ballot. We need to elect nurses. We need to elect business people. Above all, we need to elect people with integrity and common sense, who put our community, not special interests, as their No. 1 priority.

(Josephine Thornton is a member of the board of directors of the Petaluma Health Care District.)