A new proposal for funding the $240 million rebuilding and seismic retrofit of Sequoia Hospital also calls for removing the Sequoia Healthcare District entirely from operation of the hospital run by Catholic Healthcare West (CHW).
The health-care district board will hear a presentation of the proposal at its meeting Tuesday, Sept. 4, in the Sequoia Room on the ground floor of the hospital. Open community forms on the proposals are planned in mid-September.
Under the proposed agreement, CHW, the district, and the hospital will each contribute $75 million to the project to rebuild, modernize, and seismically strengthen the 1940s-vintage hospital. The final $15 million would be made up through funds raised by the Sequoia Hospital Foundation.
“The proposed terms involve no additional cost to our District’s residents … while allowing for the District to continue valuable community health programs,” board chairman Kathleen Kane wrote in a letter to the board.
The proposal would also remove the health-care district, a public agency supported by taxpayers, from any role in running the hospital. Currently, the district board appoints five members to the board of Sequoia Health Services (SHS), the nonprofit that owns and governs the hospital. For the most part, district board members appointed themselves to serve on the 10-member SHS board.
That involvement would end under the proposed agreement. Instead, the public’s role with SHS would be as community representatives appointed to the SHS board by the hospital. The board is likely to be expanded to 12 to 15 members, according to the hospital’s chief administrator, Glenna Vaskelis.
“Sequoia Hospital will be operated as a non-religious institution in accordance with the ‘Statement of Common Values’ that now applies to the Hospital,” according to the summary posted on the Web.
Plans for the massive rebuild were approved by the City Council of Redwood City on Aug. 27. Groundbreaking is set for November.
For more information, go to: Sequoiahealthcaredistrict.com and sequoiahospital.org.
News Editor Renee Batti contributed to this report.
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