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The San Benito Health Care District Board attempted to follow the California statutes in the sale or lease of Hazel Hawkins. As an afterthought, it came up with seven criteria a potential party would need to meet to qualify.
Clearly, there are many more questions than answers for public scrutiny regarding the “sale” to an outside organization.
Hazel Hawkins’ CEO, Board of Directors, and consultants have held out Insight as “an experienced hospital operator who delivers high-quality care and has a good business track record.”
The SBHCD regards Insight as having long-term business experience even though Insight has only been in business since 2008 and limited as a physician’s practice.
How can the voters accept and expect Insight, which has only operated a failing hospital enterprise for a combined four years while only achieving a One-Star CMS rating. They have never owned or operated a complex failing rural Critical Access Hospital (CAH) with nursing homes and outlying clinics. (The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid)
How is Insight a qualified candidate to lease or purchase Hazel Hawkins?
The Facts*
Insight has only owned one hospital since 2020 and the other since 2022 (Insight website, see business timeline)
Insight’s own Dayne Walling, Director of Public Policy and Government Relations, says it all when he publicly stated, “We (Insight) have a lot to learn about rural healthcare. We want to be very honest about that”. (Daily Gate City)
Insights combined failed hospital operations as of 2024 only generated $269M in income for a loss of over $60M, earning a damaging operating margin loss of -100%. (ahd.com) (The American Hospital Association reports the average operating margin for a hospital is + 1%-2% aha.com)
For comparison, even in bankruptcy, Hazel Hawkins has outperformed Insight by generating over $410,911,273 during the same period for a loss of ($618,750) equal to a (0.01%) operating margin. (ahd.com)
Insight’s Chicago hospital only achieved a one star rating out of five CMS Rating (CMS). Healthgrades rates the facility as having a poor patient rating of 45% (19% lower than the national average) (Health Grades)
Insight has a documented history of reducing existing healthcare services upon its purchase while introducing especially surgical services, in addition to drastically decreasing licensed hospital beds from 20 to 13 in Michigan and from 402 down to 97 in Chicago and suspending maternity services. Insight has claimed they did not suspend maternity services, state records dispute. (Beckers, ahd.com)
Insight has acquired over nine additional failing hospitals within the past 12 months. They claim to have the management, leadership, and financing to support this aggressive acquisition quest. However, they did not disclose that they could not attract the staff needed to reopen their maternity ward in Chicago.
San Benito County has just over a 65K population, Chicago has over 2.7M, and Insight could not find 30 qualified staffers to operate the maternity ward. (Beckers)
Insight’s business plan is to save Hazel Hawkins, which entails keeping its current leadership team.
Where is Insight’s experienced CEO, CFO, and department leaders who would typically be brought in? (benitolink.com, sanbenito.com)
When looking for change, why would one keep the same captain and crew who sank the ship in the first place?
Insight has promised cardiac, orthopedic, and oncology care at Hazel Hawkins. The hospital’s antiquated operating rooms are closed and the adjacent undersized surgical center cannot accommodate these services. There is a lack of equipment. (OSHPOD)
No discussion, plan or funding identified.
If all these services were provided, Hazel Hawkins would still lack the 20-30 additional hospital and ICU beds needed to accommodate the program. (OSHOD)
Where will this funding come from?
The San Benito Health Care District has undertaken numerous multimillion-dollar development schemes of building an undersized skilled nursing facility around a (known since 1997) seismically non-compliant hospital building. While construction takes 4-5 years of pre-planning to begin in California, 2030is the deadline to accomplish this retrofitting issue. There are no plans or financing in place to overcome this locally. (benitolink.com-sanbenito.com)
California State statutes require the full and transparent disclosure of a purchaser of a public asset. Hazel Hawkins has failed to disclose Insight’s complete financial source of funding, the depth of their financing, and who the owners are. Interestingly, Insight lists its ownership as a for-profit, nonprofit, and a nonprofit church organization.
Who is Insight? None of this has been adequately documented or publicly provided (CRS)
Insight’s MI hospital is a metropolitan surgical specialty hospital. Their Chicago hospital is another intercity hospital, and their only rural hospital has not even opened yet. (Inisght’s website)
Conclusions:
There should have been six levels of professional oversight:
1.The District Board’s expensive consultant, B. Riley.
Hazel Hawkin’s CEO
Hazel Hawkin’s CFO
4. The SBHC District’s Ad hoc Committee
5. The HHH Board Chair
6. Lastly, the individual board members
All have failed in their recommendation that Insight’s takeover of Hazel Hawkins is in the community’s best interests.
Given that this is the sale of a treasured public asset, why shouldn’t the community have the right and expectation of having a qualified third party examine the proposed lease sale, term, financing, and candidate qualifications?
San Benito’s voters need to know and verify these facts, as any decision for the future of Hazel Hawkins should be left to the new Board once the three open board positions are elected in 14 days. Please vote an informed no on Measure “X”
Editor’s note: *BenitoLink has not confirmed all to these facts.
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