Latinos Financial Impact

Sonoma Valley Sun

People complain, sometimes, to Sonoma Valley Hospital officials about non-citizens coming in as patients because they assume that non-citizens drain the hospital’s finances. That assumption is wrong, hospital officials say.

“We are better off with that community here than if we didn’t have them,” said Jim McSweeney, the hospital’s chief financial officer. If the Valley’s non-citizen population disappeared, “There’s no question in my mind that the hospital would be worse off, financially,” he said.

Hospital finance is a “confusing, arcane” subject, but McSweeney explained it this way:About half of the births that take place every year at the Sonoma Valley Hospital are paid for by Medi-Cal, a state and federal program for the poor that is often used in the Valley by Latina mothers.

“You can get on it if you’re a mother, even if you’re not a citizen,” McSweeney said.Medi-Cal accounts for about 10 percent of the hospital’s total income. Another 40 percent of the hospital’s income comes from Medicare, the federal program for those over age 65.

But Medicare kicks in more funding as the hospital serves more Medi-Cal patients.The Sonoma Valley Hospital gets an extra $500,000 a year from Medicare because of all the Medi-Cal patients that it serves.For comparison’s sake, that $500,000 is about one quarter of the $2 million in revenue that the hospital gets annually through the parcel tax paid by the Valley’s property owners.

Financially speaking, the more patients the hospital gets, the better off it is. Additional patients help offset the fixed costs that the hospital incurs by being open and staffed around the clock.“One, or two or 10 more births, aren’t going to add a dime to our costs,” McSweeney said.