Lompoc Valley Medical Center has entered into talks about taking over the Sansum Clinic operations in the city, with the hopes of also reopening a closed urgent care.
The two organizations will spend several months on due diligence to assess whether a transition of ownership of the Sansum Clinic facility and services to LVMC would better serve patients, staff and the community and otherwise make sense financially.
“For over two decades, we have partnered with Sansum to assure access to high-quality primary and specialty care. We envision very little change in the current operations, and would plan to restore daily urgent care for our entire community,” said Jim Raggio, LVMC chief executive officer.
If the acquisition goes through, operations essentially would continue “as is,” Raggio told Noozhawk.
Sansum’s urgent care facility for walk-in patients in Lompoc closed earlier this year.
“That’s one of the things that I think the community needs,” Raggio said. “It would be opened to the entire community. We’d like to keep that open seven days a week. If it goes through, that would be the plan.”
Without a walk-in urgent care, those patients often wind up in the hospital’s Emergency Department, where they often must wait since those with more serious complaints get seen first.
“Good quality care is having access at a very cost-effective, high-quality place,” he said.
Dr. Kurt N. Ransohoff, Sansum chief executive officer and chief medical officer, said Sansum has been looking at ways to continue providing the best possible health care to patients in Lompoc.
“As part of our thinking, we are aware that Lompoc Valley Medical Center has the opportunity to provide a vertical, integrated solution, which will enable the organization to provide services across the entire spectrum of care,” Ransohoff said. “We think that offers some significant advantages to all concerned.”
The hospital district would employ Sansum Clinic’s Lompoc staff, except for the physicians. The doctors would operate under professional service agreements with Lompoc’s health-care district.
In Lompoc, Sansum operates a multi-specialty facility at 1125 North H St, providing family medicine, internal medical, pediatrics and more.
Once the due diligence is done in a couple of months, the Lompoc hospital’s board of directors and Sansum’s board of trustees still must approve the transaction.
Sansum Clinic boasts of being the oldest independent, multi-specialty provider of outpatient health-care services on the Central Coast, and the last remaining independent medical foundation in California.
The organization’s roots date back to 1921 with the creation of the original Sansum Medical Clinic and the Santa Barbara Medical Clinic, both founded in 1921.
Sansum Medical Clinic’s founder, Dr. William David Sansum, pioneered treatment of diabetes by being the first doctor in the U.S. to use insulin.
Since then, Sansum has focused on treating patients’ health needs with the latest research and medical advances.
Sansum Clinic has some 180 physicians and more than 30 specialties to serve approximately 129,000 patients, who account for 800,000 visits yearly at 22 patient care facilities.
Lompoc Valley Medical Center, 1515 E. Ocean Ave., touts itself as the first hospital district in the state, and operates a 60-bed hospital in addition to a facility with 110 long-term care beds.
In July alone, the hospital delivered 35 babies, conducted 126 surgeries and 148 endoscopies, and saw 1,933 Emergency Department visits.
Clinic appointments numbered 2,350 while outpatient visits topped 3,470.
Last year, Sansum Clinic and Cottage Health called off their merger talks after four years amid ongoing difficulties gaining the needed federal approval.
In June 2013, the two nonprofit organizations touted the proposed merger as a way to “create an integrated health delivery system.” The deal would have combined Cottage’s three hospitals and other facilities with some two dozen ambulatory clinic sites throughout Santa Barbara County.
— Noozhawk North County editor Janene Scully can be reached at jscully@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.