Healthcare in jeopardy if Measure B passes

It's my responsibility along with the hospital's board of trustees and its Medical Executive Committee to ensure that our community and the patients we serve have access to continuous, affordable, quality healthcare.

We believe if Measure B is voted in as law, our community's access to healthcare would be compromised.

Let me explain. We're under a state mandate to seismically retrofit the original hospital building by January 2013. If we don't retrofit our original building by this date, we must move the inpatient departments out of that building to a seismically safe building or shut down those departments completely. Retrofitting our original building isn't cost effective, so we've decided to build an additional hospital wing adjacent to the one we just completed.

If we cannot complete the new building by the state mandated date, we risk losing healthcare services that are located in the original building. Those services include the maternity department, the neonatal intensive care unit, the pediatrics department, the oncology unit, our definitive observation unit and the surgery department. Also, if we cannot provide surgical services, the emergency department is impacted, since the state requires surgical services be available if you provide emergency services.

The time factor for completing the new building is very tight. With state and city approvals, design issues and actual construction, we will barely make our Jan. 1, 2013, deadline.

If Measure B passes we would have to: 1) factor in a special election, which would add an additional six to nine months to our already tight timeline; 2) budget approximately $50,000 to execute the ballot process and $200,000 to $500,000 to run a campaign.

Measure B would prevent us from meeting the state mandated 2013 deadline, thereby closing down the services in our original building. It also forces us to spend precious healthcare dollars that we could allocate for new diagnostic and lifesaving equipment.

My overriding concern is to ensure that our community and the patients we serve have access to affordable quality healthcare. Measure B would impede that.

Please join me in voting no on Measure B.

Jim Sherman

Thousand Oaks

Sherman is president and CEO of Los Robles Hospital and Medical Center.