Fifteen minutes before Regional Medical Center was set to re-open its doors as a Level II trauma center once again, gold and blue heart-shaped confetti showered down on celebrants who had gathered Tuesday morning to mark Santa Clara County’s acquisition of the hospital.
It bookended a nearly 14-month fight to preserve access to critical life-saving care in East San Jose, after the hospital’s previous owners, HCA Healthcare, announced last February that they would be shuttering its Level II trauma center, as well as services for stroke and cardiac patients.
Community advocates mounted a “Rescue Our Medical Care” campaign in which they protested outside the hospital along McKee Road and called on Attorney General Rob Bonta to intervene. Meanwhile, county leaders urged the California Department of Public Health to step in, arguing that the closures would worsen patient outcomes and overload Valley Medical Center — one of two Level I trauma centers in the county, which provide the highest level of care.
HCA, one of the largest for-profit hospital chains in the country, eventually amended its decision and instead opted to downgrade the trauma center to a Level III facility — a move that community members criticized because it would leave the hospital without an in-house trauma surgeon. The changes went into effect on Aug. 12, 2024.
Dr. Gloria Jiménez, who has worked at Regional Medical Center for the last six years, volunteered to be the trauma surgeon on the very first shift when the doors opened at noon.
“Walking through the hallways this morning, it was like coming home, seeing all the staff and feeling the energy and seeing all of you here to commemorate this momentous occasion,” Jiménez told a crowd of medical professionals, county officials and other first responders who had gathered in the hospital’s main lobby.
The $150 million acquisition of Regional Medical Center will make the 258-bed hospital the fourth in the Santa Clara Valley Healthcare System, which is the second-largest county-owned health and hospital system in the state. Along with the immediate restoration of the trauma center and stroke and cardiac services, the county said it also plans on bringing back labor and delivery, which ended at the hospital in 2020, and introducing new healthcare services.
Santa Clara County Supervisor Otto Lee, who serves as the board’s president, called the purchase of the hospital “long overdue.”
“This should have happened a decade ago, because Regional Medical clients, so many of them are covered by Medicare and Medicaid, which our county is much better suited to work with this community,” he told Bay Area News Group. “That’s why I think this is so important that it finally happened. We have a lot of concerns about the future cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, but today we want to celebrate this momentous occasion.”
East San Jose residents living near the hospital are almost twice as likely to not have health insurance compared to the rest of the county, and about 40% of county residents enrolled in Medi-Cal — California’s name for Medicaid, the federal low-income health insurance program — live within five miles of the hospital, according to county officials.
Supervisor Betty Duong, who was a part of the “Rescue Our Medical Care” campaign last year before she was sworn into office at the end of the year, said Tuesday was a “proud day for East San Jose.” Regional Medical Center is in her district and she said it’s “always been a part of the emergency healthcare plan” in the county.
“To be out there rallying on the sidewalk with my neighbors, with my colleagues, with fellow community health advocates and then to now be part of the leadership body that confirmed and affirmed our commitment to healthcare, it truly is a Santa Clara County story,” she told Bay Area News Group. “It’s a reflection of the will of the people where homegrown residents and neighbors become part of the decision-making process.”
Duong said that she’s excited about what the county can do in collaboration with the community to better the future of the hospital.
“What does healthcare look like when we want to build it in a truly culturally competent, language-accessible, patient-client-community-centered operation?” she said.
County Executive James Williams called the purchase of Regional Medical Center a “commitment to excellence and service.” Despite the potential federal challenges ahead that could decimate the county’s budget, Williams said that they knew making the investment was “necessary.”
“This is about providing opportunity to families who otherwise would go without, because this county organization on its 175th anniversary has once again stepped forward to the challenge of delivering excellence in service,” he said. “Integrating Regional Medical Center into Santa Clara Valley Healthcare is about providing and delivering access to care, but it’s also about providing a vision for others to build upon across the Bay Area, across California and across the country — about what it means when we invest in excellence and public service as a community.”