Residents challenge incumbents for seats on El Camino Hospital Board Residents challenge incumbents for seats on El Camino Hospital Board (August 23, 2002)

Five candidates for two open seats Five candidates for two open seats (August 23, 2002)

By Bill D'Agostino

El Camino Hospital is at a critical crossroads: its main tower needs to be rebuilt to comply with a state mandated earthquake retrofit. It's doctors are aging, and new doctors are difficult to recruit into the area, thanks to an overpriced housing market. The hospital and its doctors continue to get paid less and less for services from Medicare and Medi-Cal.

With full knowledge of those pressures David O'Connor, the hospital board chair, said he's running for reelection. He hopes to continue the progress he's made over the past eight years, securing El Camino's bottom line and rebuilding its reputation. "It'd be one thing if we were in a position -- like 15, 20 years ago -- when we had 100 percent fee for service and sitting on the board was something that you could do for a meaningful gesture of community involvement. The issues now are too critical."

O'Connor, a Sunnyvale resident and the CEO and Executive Director of the East San Jose-based Foothill Family Medical Clinic, was on the board in 1997 when it decided to return the hospital -- located on Grant Road -- to district control and public oversight. The highly lauded reversal, sparked by O'Connor, followed years of bad press and a state Attorney General investigation into the hospital, among other turmoil. In 1992, succumbing to market pressures, it had become a private non-profit integrated delivery system.

Two board positions are open in this year's board election. Both O'Connor and fellow incumbent David Reeder are running for reelection. They are being challenged by three new faces, including two from Mountain View: Bill James, Laura Ferrer and Los Altos resident Philip Green.

The hospital's district encompasses Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills and parts of Sunnyvale.

James, a patent attorney and the volunteer president for Rescue Now International, a nonprofit relief organization, said as a non-medical professional he hopes to bring more oversight and community accountability to the hospital board.

"Having strong and committed and hardworking outside directors who are truly independent of management is a very valuable asset, something that we seem to be lacking in the corporate world and really can't afford to have absent on the public board like the El Camino Hospital," he said.

James, a proficient Spanish speaker who lived in Mexico for ten months on a Fulbright Scholarship, also wants to have the hospital reach out more to the area's Spanish-speaking population. "There are links between the community and the hospital that needs to be improved," he said. "Finding ways to fund that, finding ways to structure that and then putting those folks in contact with the people who need the services would be something that I'd spend some time doing."

Ferrer, a technical writer, said she was solicited by the local Libertarian Party to run for the seat. She noted she was "still finding out" what the position entailed.

Green was unavailable for comment by press time.

Former Los Altos Council member Reeder, the board's secretary and treasurer, was appointed to the board in 1999 after the previous year's election failed to come up with enough candidates to fill the two open spots. Reeder is an account manager for Sun Microsystems

Two years ago, the board -- including Reeder and O'Connor -- hired a new CEO: Lee Domanico.

"We've made some great strides in the last three years and I want to keep doing that," Reeder said. "Financially we're doing much better. ... Lee's doing a great job of putting together a really progressive team of people to run the hospital and doing a lot of work in terms of building up the image of the hospital."