Your Voice. Our Community. Our Healthcare.
Community Comes Together to Discuss the Future of Healthcare in the Santa Clara Valley
Introduction
On Tuesday, May 26, 2026, the Santa Paula Latino Town Hall hosted the Santa Paula Hospital Forum at the historic Casa Del Mexicano in Santa Paula. The forum brought together community members, healthcare professionals, business leaders, elected officials, and civic organizations to engage in an open and respectful dialogue about the future of Santa Paula Hospital and access to quality healthcare throughout the Santa Clara Valley.
The evening provided residents with a unique opportunity to hear directly from Dr. Fankhauser, Director of the Ventura County Health Care Agency, regarding the current status of Santa Paula Hospital, the challenges facing the Ventura County Health Care Agency, and the County’s vision for the future of healthcare services in our region.
Dr. Fankhauser was joined by a distinguished panel of community leaders who shared their perspectives and helped facilitate community discussion:
• Pshyra Jones, Executive Director, Health Equity, Gold Coast Health Plan
• Harold Edwards, President and Chief Executive Officer, Limoneira Company
• Daisy Rojas, B.S., Public Health with a Concentration in Epidemiology and Member, Santa Paula Latino Town Hall
• Laura Espinosa, Chair, Gold Coast Health Plan Commission, Founding Member, and Past President, Santa Paula Latino Town Hall
• Mary Ann Krause, Chair, Santa Clara Valley Together and Member, Santa Clara Valley Hospital Blue Ribbon Committee
• Dr. Gabino Aguirre, Chair, Isabella Project and Member, Santa Paula Latino Town Hall
Throughout the evening, attendees demonstrated a deep commitment to the health and well-being of our community by asking thoughtful and substantive questions regarding emergency medical services, hospital operations, financial sustainability, seismic retrofit requirements, long-term planning, behavioral health services, healthcare access, and the future of Santa Paula Hospital.
During the forum, the Santa Paula Latino Town Hall collected the written questions submitted by participants and forwarded them to the Ventura County Health Care Agency with a request for written responses. The Agency graciously agreed to continue the dialogue by providing the responses contained in this document.
The questions and answers that follow are presented in the interest of transparency, public education, and community engagement. They are intended to ensure that everyone—including those who were unable to attend the forum—has access to the information provided by the Ventura County Health Care Agency. We encourage all residents to review these responses carefully and remain actively engaged as important decisions continue to shape the future of healthcare in the Santa Clara Valley.
The Santa Paula Latino Town Hall extends its sincere appreciation to Dr. Fankhauser, the Ventura County Health Care Agency, our distinguished panelists, community partners, volunteers, and the many residents who participated in this important public forum. Together, we remain committed to advocating for equitable, accessible, and high-quality healthcare while working collaboratively to preserve essential healthcare services close to home for current and future generations.
Service Continuity & Access
I live in District 4 with a medically fragile child (trach/ventilator). How will Santa Paula, Fillmore, and Piru access emergency and outreach services? What is the plan to protect vulnerable residents?
We recognize the overwhelming worry and fear that comes with securing life-saving care for a vulnerable family member.
We want to reassure you that the County and Health Care Agency will continue to provide services in the Santa Paula, Fillmore, and Piru communities. Serious emergencies, like major breathing crises, trauma, or strokes, will continue to be sent directly by ambulances to specialized centers like VCMC or CMH to keep patients safe. SPH will stay open until 2030.
Why would Santa Paula Hospital close or reduce services before a new location to replace it is finalized and ready for the community? We live in Piru and already travel very far for care.
We hear you, and we know that traveling from Piru or Fillmore makes getting care harder. California’s 2030 earthquake laws require hospitals to meet updated building standards. To prepare, we are actively designing a new care system to ensure uninterrupted medical services. Our goal is to maintain a strong healthcare presence along the Highway 126 corridor, keeping emergency and family services easily accessible for residents in Piru and Fillmore.
Inpatient volume is down 23%, and key units like the ICU and OB closed in 2024. Why has use gone down? Do ambulances bypass us, or is the data biased?
The numbers are real and reflect how modern healthcare works. Most people in the valley who need to stay overnight in a hospital, about 77% already choose or are sent to larger hospitals outside the valley. Real ambulance data shows that 80% of the trips to SPH are for lower-intensity needs, and less than half of one percent are major, life-threatening cases. Ambulances take critical cases to larger centers because that is where the advanced specialists are located.
Can you give data on the ER census and transfers? Are sick patients transferred mostly because specialty services were cut?
SPH has about 17,000 ER visits a year, but only 5.5% of those patients actually need to be admitted to a hospital bed. This low number shows that the ER mostly treats less-serious issues, like minor injuries or common illnesses. When patients are transferred out, it is not because of recent budget cuts. Patients continue to be transferred to ensure that they receive the best medical care for serious conditions like major trauma or heart attack that require specialized doctors and equipment.
What specific reforms are being implemented immediately? How are you going to recruit and retain physicians?
While the new modern health hub plan is in development, we are actively streamlining our current clinic workflows to improve your experience and reduce wait. Recruiting excellent physicians to small, rural hospitals is a challenge nationwide, as many physicians prefer to work in modern spaces with the latest advanced tools rather than in older buildings. This new project may help us attract top quality doctors to serve your families.
Fiscal Accountability & Use of Funds
The County bought SPH for $2.7M, which included land sold for $10M. The money made on that sale HAS to go back into 24-hour care in Santa Paula. How will you ensure citizens are not robbed?
The County purchased the hospital building and 13.5 acres for $2.75 million. The remaining 15.5 acres of the surrounding campus were sold by a court-appointed bankruptcy committee. This sale was used strictly to clear the past debts of the old hospital before the County stepped in and secured the facility as a public health-care safety net for the community. The County did not keep that $10 million. In fact, the County spent an extra $4.5 million of its own money just to fix and reopen the hospital in 2006.
We see losses at Santa Paula Hospital, but what are the losses at VCMC and how have total system losses changed?
SPH has been losing $7.5 million to $15 million annually due to low patient demand combined with high fixed operating costs. While the broader VCMC health system has historically absorbed these losses, the new federal law (HR1) will cut our healthcare funding by $400 million by 2031. Facing these massive system-wide cuts, we can no longer afford to spend millions to keep a nearly empty building open. Instead, every dollar saved will be redirected to where it matters most: direct, frontline, patient care.
Who is being held accountable for financial performance? What projects or programs may be delayed or canceled because of this?
The leadership of the Health Care Agency is fully accountable to the County CEO and the County Board of Supervisors and the public. To protect our healthcare safety net from massive federal funding cuts, we are evaluating every program. No decisions have been made to cancel specific local programs. The County is committed to ensure that health care services that are aligned with the needs for the residents of Santa Clara River Valley, are currently and will continue to be available.
Strategic Alternatives & Innovation
What about turning the building into a women’s wellness center instead of closing the OB unit? Can we build an “all-in-one” center like Kaiser or CMH?
This is an excellent suggestion, and it matches our vision. While we cannot keep the current building open as a full hospital due to earthquake laws, our plan is to ensure we have a mix of services that are congruent with the community needs. We have several years even a decade in the area. We have countless health statistics and utilization of the population in the Santa Clara River Valley. We will use these historical trends to predict outcomes and usage of services to align care to meet residents’ needs. However, this location also presents challenges for residents in the Valley. Our goal is to find a location down the hill perhaps close to HWY 126 to make healthcare more accessible to residents throughout the valley.
Has HCA considered partnering with Kaiser, Dignity, or UCLA to provide hospital services? Can another agency take over if the County cannot?
We have looked closely at corporate and public-private partnerships. Large private systems like Kaiser or UCLA have strict requirements about where they build, and they look for high patient volumes that a small community like ours does not have. No other healthcare groups have expressed interest in taking over the current building because of the massive in excess of $25 million cost for earthquake safety upgrades.
Why not place the hospital in the middle of Santa Paula and Fillmore? Does Limoneira have land there, and would it qualify for rural hospital funding?
We did study a 25-acre parcel of land owned by the Limoneira Company for a replacement hospital. However, updated studies showed that building a brand-new hospital there would exceed the County’s appetite for investment and would perpetuate and already continuous financial losses. Also, highway access rules and land constraints mean a hospital could not be finished there before the 2030 legal deadline.
Why not organize local fundraisers (marathons, GoFundMe, dances) with Limoneira and local museums to raise money instead of waiting for state funds?
We love the passion and spirit of this community, and we want to be highly visible and collaborative with you. While local fundraisers show how much the community cares, the costs we are facing are simply too large for grass-roots fundraising. A new hospital requires up at minimum tens-of-millions to build and millions more each year to run. We must rely on major state funds, federal grants, and strategic property planning to secure that level of funding.
Re: Pg 9 Pie Chart (on the Santa Paula Hospital Presentation), what would you estimate the percentage would need to be to consider the new facility off the Hwy 126?
To build a facility right off Highway 126, the location must be highly accessible for residents traveling from Santa Paula, Fillmore, and Piru. We do not use a strict percentage rule. Instead, we look at traffic patterns, transit times, and safety on the highway. Any final site selection will focus on making sure the location is easy to reach for the maximum number of valley residents. Our goal is to be accessible to as many patients as possible. While we prioritize convenient locations, our final decision must balance these goals with what is practically available and can be sustainably maintained to provide you with high-quality, uninterrupted care.
Legislative & Political Pressure
What specifically are you doing to pressure our state legislative delegation and members of Congress for extra resources? What role can representatives play?
We are actively working with our state and federal lawmakers. Our representatives play a huge role by carrying our community’s voice to Sacramento and Washington, D.C. We are showing them real data about our rural valley population to fight for special grants and emergency funding. We are directly asking them to help fund our new clinical space and protect our local health network from federal budget cuts.
What are your suggestions on how to pressure the Board of Supervisors to take our community seriously? It feels like the community versus the Board.
The Board of Supervisors takes this community very seriously, which is why they ordered an in-depth study of the valley’s health needs rather than making quick decisions. You can make your voice heard by continuing to attend town halls, joining county public meetings, and sharing your personal healthcare stories. Our Agency is actively using your feedback to design new healthcare options that will be presented to the Board in August 2026. We want to work directly with, the community, to ensure leadership can make a fully informed final decision about the continuation of care in the valley.
How will the agency compete with private systems? How are all agencies collaborating to get a good return on investment (ROI)?
We compete by continuing to provide modern, high-quality healthcare right in our local neighborhoods by shifting resources out of underused, expensive buildings and investing them directly into the community. Through close partnerships with local businesses, schools, and government, we are creating a more connected network of support to improve public health. This approach allows us to focus heavily on preventive care, diabetes management, and proactive wellness programs that keep everyone healthy, thriving, and out of the hospital.
Planning & Regulatory Deadlines
Why weren’t County resources used for a one-time earthquake retrofit? Why not maintain a state-of-the-art emergency/urgent care hospital and close only other units?
Upgrading our older facility to meet strict seismic safety standards and address deferred maintenance is a highly complex and costly challenge. Bringing the current building up to basic earthquake legal requirements would require an investment exceeding $25 million. Additionally, state licensing laws mandate that a hospital maintain expensive, 24/7 departments, regardless of how few patients utilize them. Meeting these staffing and operational requirements would result in an ongoing loss of over $7.5 million every year, which would unfortunately divert vital funding away from our local community clinics and outpatient services.
For 10 years we have heard about plans for a new hospital in East Santa Paula. Why are those plans on hold? What is the actual HCA plan?
Early plans for a new hospital on the Limoneira land were thoroughly studied. However, an internal analysis completed in 2024 and updated in 2025 revealed that a new hospital has a large span of cost from tens to hundreds of millions to build and would lose more than $7.5 million a year. It would require constant public subsidies to survive. HCA’s goal is to present a realistic, high-quality, and financially secure plan to the Board in August 2026 that can be successfully built and sustained to serve our patients long-term.
Why hasn’t a third-party provider option been pursued sooner when the 2030 deadline has been known since 2008?
The County has been actively exploring long-term strategic solutions for years, beginning with independent expert assessments in 2019. We are currently working alongside healthcare consultants at Health Management Associates (HMA) to analyze and build practical, sustainable care models that are completely under County control. Finding a third-party partner is incredibly difficult because every hospital system in California is facing the exact same expensive 2030 earthquake deadlines. Our priority is making sure your medical care is continuous and uninterrupted. By focusing on realistic and County-controlled models, we are working to prevent any disruptions to your health services.
Myth vs Fact Myth vs Fact
How and why would you not invest any further in your adopted hospital when it would further burden other hospitals and impact our community?
We hear you, and we are not stopping our investments in the valley’s health. We are deeply committed to your health, but sinking millions into a 60-year-old building that will not legally qualify as a hospital in less than four years is not a good use of public funds. By avoiding temporary fixes on the old site, we protect vital funding for our neighborhood clinics and doctors. Instead, we are investing in a brand-new, modern facility designed to provide exceptional care for decades to come.
For More Information
The Ventura County Health Care Agency (HCA) has established a dedicated webpage to keep the community informed about the future of Santa Paula Hospital and healthcare services in the Santa Clara River Valley.
Community members are encouraged to visit the following webpage:
https://hca.venturacounty.gov/hospitals/santa-paula-hospital-updates/
On the webpage, the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) section contains responses to the questions submitted following the Santa Paula Hospital Forum. To improve readability and avoid duplication, the HCA team reviewed all submitted questions, organized them into common themes, and combined similar questions that required the same response.
The webpage will continue to be updated as additional information becomes available regarding Santa Paula Hospital and future healthcare planning efforts.
Within the Outreach and Community Input section of the webpage, community members may also submit additional questions directly to Health Management Associates (HMA). HMA has been retained by the Ventura County Health Care Agency to conduct an independent assessment and develop recommendations regarding options for continuing healthcare services in the Santa Clara River Valley.
The Santa Paula Latino Town Hall and the Ventura County Health Care Agency remain committed to maintaining an open dialogue with the community. Information regarding future public meetings, community engagement opportunities, and project updates will be shared as it becomes available.
We encourage all residents, healthcare stakeholders, and community partners to stay informed, participate in future discussions, and continue working together to help ensure that accessible, high-quality healthcare remains available close to home for the residents of the Santa Clara Valley.