I have spent the past two days gleaning through historical items at Paradise Valley Hospital (PVH). Late last year Adventist Health, the corporate headquarters for the 21-hospital system, announced the sale of PVH to Prime Healthcare for $30 million. The deal was done quietly and despite a rival bid by a group of PVH physicians and numerous lawsuits, the state attorney general in the end allowed the sale to go through (PDF document).
After spending two days at their facilities, from talking to several people involved in the deal, the sale was a decision that Adventist Health was reluctant to make, but with increasing financial losses, it was a decision they had to make. Last year they were starting to amass losses close to a million dollars a month, and that amount was beginning to approach two million a month as the deal was postponed. Aging equipment desperately needed to be replaced, and in the mid-range future, millions of dollars were needed to retrofit the hospital to meet new earthquake standards. I do not envy administrators at PVH who had to grapple with this difficult decision to sell PVH. According to one source, PVH administration had a surplus of $25 million back in 1989, but over the past 17 years those reserves have been exhausted as state laws for reimbursement for the uninsured and underprivileged have changed.
The sale of PVH reminded me of some things I read this past week in the new book of collected essays by George R. Knight, If I Were the Devil (Review and Herald, 2007). While the bulk of the book contains edited versions of articles that Dr. Knight has presented as papers or published elsewhere in denominational publications over the past 15 years, several essays impacted my thinking (again). The one idea that hits home for me is his sociological analysis using Moberg’s five stages of institutional growth. The place where our church needs to be is the third stage, optimum growth. Adventism, if I understand Dr. Knight correctly, exists for the purpose of mission. If I apply this paradigm to recent events at PVH, the tragedy of what has occurred at PVH is not that the church has lost one of its hospitals, but rather, it has lost an opportunity for mission. This is particularly sad in light of the stipulation in the sale that Adventist Health would never again compete with Prime Healthcare in that market. What hurts the worst for me as a church member (as a mere observer) is that not only have we failed to make one particular institution financially viable, but we have given up our chance to ever re-enter that market using the medical arm of our church as an “entering wedge.” Now a for-profit hospital is taking over, making drastic cuts, and it still waits to be seen whether they will be able to turn things around (last week one employee told me that fifty people were fired, and this week another fifty were let go).
What I am grateful for is that as an archivist and historian is the opportunity to save some of PVH’s valuable historical materials. These include an original letter by Ellen White, and the original book with stock certificates that document people like Josephine Gotzian, John Burden, Ellen White, and many other early Adventists who sacrificially gave the funds to not only start an Adventist healthcare facility, but to advance the mission of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in San Diego. These historical materials are being placed into the Archives & Special Collections at Loma Linda University where they will, once processed, be available for researchers. While the sale of PVH is truly a tragedy, perhaps by saving some of these historical materials the amazing and providential story of PVH can continue to inspire future medical missionaries to continue to advance the mission of the church in other parts of the world, and help instill a sense of caution that no Adventist health institution, no matter how old or revered, is safe to simply exist.
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