By Khalida Sarwari
The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors today approved the appropriation of half a million dollars for a consultant group hired to remodel the county’s hospital system, a move criticized by some in the community who claim that county is not being transparent.
The decision was made unanimously at a board meeting.
The funds will go to Alvarez and Marsal, a consultant group county Executive Jeff Smith hired to prepare the county’s hospitals for healthcare reform.
The original proposal was for $1 million, but Supervisor George Shirakawa suggested that half of that sum should be paid now and that discussion on the other half should be deferred to a later date. The rest of the board agreed and decided to revisit the issue sometime in mid-April.
In between now and then, the board also plans to hold a study session to review the contract with Alvarez and Marsal, which totals $6 million for the year.
Smith said the group has been working on a number of projects to save the county money, including evaluating Santa Clara Valley Medical Center’s core information technology system and other strategic systems.
A handful of members from the local chapter of the Service Employees International Union came to address the board. Some of them were holding signs that read, “A&M We Are Not Your ATM.”
About seven people addressed the board, and many of them questioned the county’s priorities.
Emma Davis, a chief steward for Valley Medical Center, wondered why the county had previously spent $20 million on Deloitte and Touche, another consulting firm, but had not shown its results.
“What is it that Alvarez is doing that Deloitte didn’t do?” She asked. “Where is the plan? Because we haven’t seen one.”
Smith told her the plan was approved and released in September.
“It’s a good document and I think it needs to be followed,” he said.
He said the work that Deloitte had done was different from that of Alvarez and Marsal. Both were hired to find cost-saving measures, but Smith said Alvarez and Marsal is to also recommend ways to prepare for the healthcare reform.
“This is not a consultation to give us a how-to,” Smith said. “It’s a management augmentation consultation. This is to prepare us for healthcare reform.”
After the meeting, some were left unconvinced.
Martin Contreras, an assistant chief steward, criticized the hiring of Alvarez and Marsal without a public bid and the county’s placing the issue on the consent calendar, thereby avoiding public testimony.
“The figure keeps going up and up,” he said. “There needs to be an end. The community should have some input.”
In a telephone interview after the meeting, Supervisor Liz Kniss said Deloitte was replaced because they didn’t have a strategic plan even after two years. She said after Smith was appointed, he analyzed their progress and said that “what should have happened didn’t.”
Kniss said the new health care act has prompted the county to look at funding sources differently.
“I think Alvarez and Marsal has put us in a good spot,” Kniss said. “It’s important for the public to understand we have entered a very different era in health care. Far more people are going to be on Medi-Cal. We’re very concerned about us being able to handle that number.”
She said with $1.6 billion being spent on the county’s health and hospital system, “how we handle it is among the most important things that we do.”