Southwest Riverside County is no longer a limited population rural area. It is a region with a population in 2009 of approximately 500,000, an increase of 325,000 persons in a nine year period. Not too many years before that the population approximated 50,000 persons.
Unfortunately the extremely rapid regional growth in a 10 year period resulted in grossly under-bedded hospitals to serve the community, with 176 beds for 175,000 in 2000 and 218 beds for 430,000 in 2009. Even with the future opening of the Temecula Regional Medical Center Hospital [approved in January 2006 by the City of Temecula] and the Loma Linda University Medical Center Hospital Murrieta the region remains under-bedded [2.2 beds per 1000 persons California average with our region in 2005 at 1.05 beds].
Southwest Healthcare System in early 2002 began a $53 million dollar project to build a 72,000 square foot Emergency and Women’s Facility at Rancho Springs Medical Center. The project after two years of waiting for State of California OSHPD approval was completed in fourth quarter 2008. As of January 26, 2010 the citizens of the region still can not use the facility because the State of California Department of Public Health [CaDPH].
As with any business, as a region expands and our businesses expands accordingly, it may be necessary to expand our facilities to meet the regions needs. Once the commitment to dollars and construction is made, the purpose is to put the facility to use, not have it sit unused because of government intervention or interference. Let us look at the facts regarding the Rancho Springs Facility:
Currently:
• An emergency room with 8 treatment bays to serve 30,000 patients annually
• 96 beds currently, with patients having to wait in hallways for beds
• 315 babies deliveries monthly
• No Neonatal ICU, babies are transported to Rady Children’s or other hospitals
• A now closed Sexual Assault Response Team Room [SART] to serve rape victims in Southwest County
Unopened Completed Facility:
• Emergency Room with 27 treatment bays and a HazMat Decontamination Room
• Bed capacity expands to 130
• 17 labor/delivery rooms, 24 post-partum rooms and all private Women’s Unit rooms
• A Neonatal ICU unit with 11 beds
• 60 new medical staff, including nurses, nurse practitioners, and physicians, an increase of 5% of the workforce.
• A state of the art Sexual Assault Response Team Room
The current Rancho Springs Hospital is so population impacted that the SART facility, which was partially equipped by donations from local service clubs, has been forced to close.  CaDPH doesn’t want patients in hallways, so ER patients and others are now placed in the SART facility room for medical care. Now all rape victims have to be transported to Riverside for treatment.  
Rancho Springs Hospital and the citizens of the region are impacted by an overcrowding problem that would be instantly resolved by opening the new facility. However, CaDPH apparently wants the overcrowding problem to be fixed before moving into the new facility—a ludicrous impossibility. The attempts to get CaDPH to license the new facility have been ongoing and soon moving into a second year. Efforts have been made not only by Southwest Healthcare, but by elected officials from the local communities, State Senators and Assemblymen, county officials, and business persons representing 3,120 businesses and 63,000 employees in the region to get the new facility open, all to no avail. A contingent of business people even met with the Governor’s representatives and made a trip to Sacramento to discuss the issue, only to discover that CaDPH employees and agency, like most State of California agencies, are quite autonomous and answer to almost no one, including not answering to elected officials.
The State of California with over 12% unemployment and with a strong need for continued economic development needs to cooperate with business, communities and its citizens. We are entitled to quality hospital facilities in the region. The continued arrogance and lack of cooperation by CaDPH, and roadblocks including lawsuits for the Temecula Hospital facility by CNA, needs to be answered by ongoing written communications from the businesses and citizens of the region to the Governor’s office and CaDPH.  As I recall from my government classes in school, this nation was founded on “government of the people, by the people, for the people”, not a few agency bureaucrats dictating what business and citizens can do under the umbrella that the citizens don’t understand or are incapable of understanding. As business people and citizens, California is already one of the most difficult and expensive states in the nation to operate in. This is the same state that mid-2010 will start fining auto related businesses if they don’t properly monitor tire pressure in peoples cars, and the same state that proposes requiring groups of skiers and ski resort employees to wear helmets while skiing. The Rancho Springs Hospital facility and the proposed Temecula facility needs to move forward and it is our responsibility to make it happen through continued contact with state officials.