By Charles M. Kelly
City Manager David Maistros expressed confidence that Avalon’s current hospital (known as Catalina Island Health) would stay open during his report to the City Council on Tuesday, March 19.
In early January, Catalina Island Health CEO Jason Paret told the council that the hospital was in bad financial shape and speculated that he could hold on until June.
He said he had been in a significant number of meetings with staff.
He wanted everyone to know that “hospital staff is pursuing every option that’s out there. I’ve been very impressed about how extremely diligent they’ve been pursuing our legislators and any funding agencies and also finding, pursuing the to find any partners to take over the facility or to partner with them and, working on the other end, the legislative end to change the funding mechanism and they’re getting a lot of traction with that.”
Maistros said he wanted to thank Assemblymember Joshua Lownthal’s staff and Lowenthal him for taking up a bill and pursuing it, but those measures would take time.
“The hospital is also actively pursuing some bridge funding to ensure what we all want and what we all want is to have that facility to stay open, so I just want to give a shout out to Jason, Bryce, Tim, and John, for what they’re doing. They’re off Island today [March 19] because they spent all day to have an opportunity to speak for 1 minute at the supervisor’s meeting this afternoon,” Maistros said.
He said the comments were well received by Supervisor Janice Hahn. Maistros said she pledged her support to help keep the facility open.
“I would just let the residents know [to] continue to support the staff at the hospital. They’re moving in a great direction, a very positive direction. I can’t say that I’ve ever been more confident that it’ll stay open than I am right now compared to where we were in January and late December,” Maistros said.
During Council Comments, Councilmember Mary Schickling said she agreed with everything Maistros said about the hospital. However, she was an elected official and people do come to me and
“When Carol Reynolds wrote the letter to the editor, people are really pressing me to get answers and I don’t think they were bad questions. I don’t think they were anything that they can’t answer,” she said.
Schickling was apparently referring to a Letter to the Editor of the Catalina Islander published on Feb. 9. (See “About Avalon’s hospital,” at thecatalinaislander.com.)
Schickling said she reached out to two people. She identified both by their first names. One of them was apparently Bryce Noll.
Schickling said hadn’t heard back. It turned out that turned was because of an email address problem. They did set up a meeting, which Noll cancelled because, according to Shickling, Noll didn’t feel he had enough time to prepare answers to her questions. She told him to look it over and when he wants to reschedule, her door is always open.
Schickling said she would let the public know when he reschedules.
Councilmember Lisa Lavelle said she had several calls over the past two weeks with Noll about the hospital. She also thanked Assemblymember Lowenthal’s office for keeping her in the loop on their conversations. Lavelle also said Lowenthal’s office had been working on getting legislation.
Lavelle said the hospital had already set up a meeting with LA Care.
“So that sounds like it’s part of the solution moving forward for funding, which is fantastic,” Lavelle said.
