SAN JOSE — As the closure of critical life-saving programs at Regional Medical Center — including its trauma center — looms, community groups are calling on California Attorney General Rob Bonta to intervene.
The pressure on the AG comes a little over a month after Santa Clara County officials pleaded with the state to halt the closure — a move that would be a first for the California Department of Public Health.
In February, HCA Healthcare, one of the nation’s largest for-profit healthcare corporations, announced that on Aug. 12 they will be closing the East San Jose hospital’s level-two trauma center and its STEMI program that treats patients with cardiac arrest, as well as downgrading its stroke program.
On Thursday, Maria Noel Fernandez, the executive director of community organization Working Partnerships USA, and Darcie Green, the executive director of nonprofit Latinas Contra Cancer, sent a letter to Bonta asking that he “investigate and intervene” to prevent the “denial of full and equal access to critical health care services to some of Santa Clara County’s most vulnerable populations.”
In an interview, Fernandez called the situation “life or death” and said that Bonta has a “moral obligation” to step in to protect not just the residents of East San Jose — especially those who are uninsured or underinsured — but residents across the county.
County officials have warned that shuttering the trauma center could spell disaster, as Regional Medical Center serves about 2,450 trauma patients a year, which is roughly a fourth of all traumas in the county. About 30% of those cases are expected to be transferred eight miles away to Valley Medical Center, potentially causing ripple effects in the countywide healthcare ecosystem.
“To have the attorney general, to have the California Department of Public Health take our lives seriously, the lives of predominantly people of color on the East Side — which we know is predominantly a community that is working class — would really demonstrate the values of the state of California, and would demonstrate that we matter, our communities matter and our lives matter,” Fernandez said.
As a mom of two young children, Jessica Diangson, an East San Jose resident and leader at Latinas Contra Cancer, worries about the impact the closure of the trauma center would have on her family and her community — many of whom, she said, aren’t aware of the situation.
She’s seen firsthand just how critical the hospital is to residents on the East Side. In 2021, her late father-in-law had a heart attack. He was rushed to Regional Medical Center, and doctors there were able to revive him.
“That came to my mind a lot when I found out that they were trying to close it,” she said. “If he would have had to go to Valley Medical or somewhere farther, being in deep East San Jose, it’s going to take like 45 minutes to get there. I don’t even want to know what that outcome would have been.”
County officials have already warned that closing the trauma center and other life saving programs could lead to longer ambulance transport times that without traffic could increase by 20 to 25 minutes.
Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez told The Mercury News that HCA Healthcare “has systematically endangered the health and well-being of people in our community by their practices.”
In 2004, HCA closed San Jose Medical Center, and in 2020 the corporation shuttered Regional Medical Center’s labor and delivery wing. Chavez said that closing Regional’s trauma center while investing in Good Samaritan Hospital in West San Jose “really smacks of bias.” About 63% of Santa Clara County’s Hispanic population lives within Regional Medical Center’s service area.
“For every single resident of our county it creates a risk because it lessens the available resources for people who need serious and quick health interventions,” Chavez said of the closure. “What that means for us is that Valley Medical Center and Stanford will both be taking more traumas, which means that we have a higher risk of them being full when somebody needs a service.”
Precedent has already been set for Bonta to step in, Fernandez and Green argue. Last year, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein sued HCA after it bought up Mission Health, a nonprofit hospital, and allegedly left it “significantly degraded.” The lawsuit alleges that patients at the Asheville, North Carolina hospital are being treated in the waiting room and that surgeons don’t have sterile equipment because HCA “refuse to pay staff to clean surgical instruments.”