Aging, access, Spanish-language services: Sonoma Valley Hospital unveils six-year Strategic Plan

Sonoma Valley Hospital has created a new, six-year strategic plan that centers on realigning the main campus, bringing care into the community, achieving financial stability and meeting seismic compliance.

“2023 and Beyond: 2023-2028 Strategic Plan” for Sonoma Valley Hospital was created with input from the community, the Sonoma Valley Health Care District Board of Directors and Valley health care partners.

“The Strategic Plan is key to aligning the efforts of all constituents of the organization toward common goals,” John Hennelly, the CEO of Sonoma Valley Hospital, told the Index-Tribune. “The plan outlines the initiatives deemed to be the most important to the organization.”

In the introduction to the document, he lists six challenges that are driving the planning process.

• The community is aging. During the coming years, data suggests that there will be a 10% increase in residents over the age of 65 while other age groups do not grow or shrink. And as people age, they are more likely to need the hospital.

“It’s a significant concern,” Hennelly said. “As we age, we consume more health care. It is vital that we have the resources in place to insure we can meet the needs of the community.”

• Access to care is inconsistent in parts of the community.

“It is,” Hennelly said. “The hospital fills a secondary role. It should serve as an anchor, backing up similar ambulatory sites dispersed throughout the community. The Strategic Plan seeks to support our community partners where appropriate.”

• The community has a broad set of health care needs. To provide better service, the hospital needs more Spanish-speaking providers and staff as well as more primary care doctors and specialists.

“This is a need that transcends Sonoma,” Hennelly said. “In my 25 years of health care in various parts of the country, this has always been deficient. While we are actively working to recruit, we’re also seeding future providers by investing time at Sonoma Valley High School to build interest in health care.”

• Ambulatory care needs to be provided closer to the communities that the hospital serves.

• The hospital’s main campus needs to be modernized to be effective in the coming decades.

“As our community’s needs evolve, the campus must evolve with it,” Hennelly said.

• Maintaining the hospital is important, but funding it is an ongoing challenge.

“Medicare and MediCal are increasing components of funding for hospitals across the region,” Hennelly said. “Neither of these programs has kept pace with the rising cost of health care.”

He said that some estimates show that reimbursement in certain areas have declined by as much as 25% since 2001 when factored for inflation.

“As Sonoma ages, our dependence upon Medicare will only increase,” Hennelly said. “That reality will require focus and creativity to insure financial viability.

“Additionally, community hospitals are reliant upon nontraditional funding sources for capital improvements. The most common of these is philanthropy. Sonoma Valley Hospital benefits from the incredible generosity of our community.”

The plan contains detailed descriptions of four key priorities to help address these concerns.

“I believe that if we focus on these priorities, Sonoma Valley Health Care District will be well-positioned to care for the needs of our entire community well into the future,” Hennelly wrote in the plan.

Here is a summary of the four priorities.

Realign the main campus

The objective of this priority is to realign the hospital campus so that services better address community needs.

To help achieve this goal, Sonoma Valley Hospital intends to work in partnership with University of California San Francisco to redevelop the hospital campus to better align resources with the needs to the Valley’s diverse and aging population. The hospital also will expand core programs and add new services while creating a space to host additional partners such as primary and specialty care physicians, health educators and diagnostics.

Time-specific plans include engaging architects and planners to create a road map to align the campus infrastructure to the Valley’s health care needs by the end of 2023 and to recruit new geriatricians into the Sonoma market by the end of the 2024 fiscal year.

Bring care into the community

This goal aims to ensure equitable access for all community members and make health care affordable, convenient and culturally sensitive.

Sonoma Valley Hospital plans to achieve this objective by exploring expanded health care services closer to the underserved populations, including the Springs communities. This could be done by creating a new facility for ambulatory services, including diagnostic, preventative, primary and specialty care.

Specific plans include establishing and expanding services to the central and west sides of the district beginning in 2024 and providing bilingual staff to support patient access and navigation starting in 2023. Another goal is to identify health disparities among patient populations and to work with community partners to identify health inequities, including social determinants of health, in 2023.

Achieve financial stability

This objective is to stabilize and secure the hospital financially to meet the growing demands for health care services and needs in the community.

The strategy is to create, establish, expand and optimize hospital services that address the needs of Valley communities through recruitment of physicians while strengthening partnerships with existing providers.

Time-specific plans are to recruit a gastroenterologist to Sonoma Valley by June 2024, to recruit one new family care practitioner or other specialist into the health care district each year beginning in 2023 and to operationalize a newly acquired 3 Tesla MRI diagnostic machine by January 2024.

Satisfy seismic compliance standards

This priority is intended to ensure that the hospital continues to meet seismic standards and remains safe.

Plans call for the goal to be reached by establishing a long-range seismic plan, along with a funded work plan that enables the hospital to meet the next seismic upgrade targets and remain compliant with state Senate Bill 1953. Efforts also will be made to lobby the state legislature to modify requirements for additional upgrades, with safety and continuous operation the main priorities.

Hennelly said that the key challenge in compiling the Strategic Plan was narrowing the myriad opportunities in Sonoma Valley.

“There are many needs in the Valley, from more primary care and obstetrics to dialysis, behavioral health, oncology, gastroenterology, geriatrics and memory care,” he said. “Then there are the physical issues, like adequate clinic space and access points appropriately deployed across the Valley.

“On top of that, we must layer access for those who have a primary language other than English. We were challenged to find the biggest impact while not being unrealistic.”

Hennelly was not surprised by any findings while compiling the Strategic Plan.

“Aside from the rapid onset of COVID, the Valley’s health care needs don’t change dramatically year over year,” he said. “Financial pressures can require focus as funding sources shift, but most of our health care needs evolve slowly.”

Bill Boerum, a member of the Sonoma Valley Hospital Board of Directors, praised the Strategic Plan.

“The strategic plan really reflects the board’s sensitivity and commitment to the needs of the community, which John Hennelly senses and has heard from us,” he said. “We were impressed by his concerted outreach in conducting a number of listening sessions. All the board members attended one or more of his sessions.

“I can say that the plan reflects what we and he heard. He is the most grounded of the four CEOs I’ve worked with over the years. It is a solid plan.”

The Sonoma Valley Health Care District Board of Directors will routinely review the Strategic Plan, Hennelly said.

Reach the reporter, Dan Johnson, at daniel.johnson@sonomanews.com.