After trying to delineate the hospital’s finances, a Santa Clara County civil grand jury has criticized El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, Calif., for lack of transparency in how it spends taxpayer money, according to a Palo Alto Daily News report.
The grand jury released a report that said finances of the public hospital district and private hospital are “intermingled to the extent that one cannot delineate how taxpayer contributions are spent,” according to the report. El Camino is a private, non-profit hospital, but it receives between $5-9 million per year from a 1 percent property tax.
The report suggests El Camino Hospital District acts as one with the corporation while using the private, non-profit corporation’s status to avoid some of the requirements of being a public agency, according to the report. The jury also noted nearly all the same people serve on the board of directors for both the district and corporation.
The grand jury was unable to determine where the hospital derived the funds used to purchase the Community Hospital of Los Gatos (Calif.) in 2009 due to “little detail and transparency” in the financial information provided the hospital. The hospital maintains the purchase did not involve taxpayer money. Since the hospital is outside of the tax district’s boundaries, no public money should have been spent.
Read the Palo Alto Daily News report on El Camino Hospital.
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