Could these lawmakers save Glenn Medical Center? Local leaders say it may be too late

Two California lawmakers have introduced bipartisan bills to restore federal funding to reopen Glenn Medical Center. But local leaders say the effort may not be enough to bring back the county’s only hospital and emergency room.

Glenn Medical Center shut down last month after losing its Critical Access Hospital designation — a federal status that provides essential funding to small rural hospitals. Without that support the hospital couldn’t stay open.

Now, Democratic U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff and Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa have both introduced legislation aimed at reversing the closure.

But Glenn County Supervisor Jim Yoder says the bills should have come sooner. He said the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which oversees hospital designations, had been reviewing the hospital’s status for years.

“This process from CMS has been out there and has been in the forefront of our community since the beginning of the year,” Yoder said. “Why are we waiting now to put legislation forward?”

By the time the bills were introduced, the situation on the ground had already become dire. Hospital staff had left, and residents now have to travel more than 30 miles to the nearest emergency rooms in Colusa or Chico. In past meetings, county officials and residents have voiced fears that residents in a life-threatening situation could die before getting help.

Even if the legislation passes, Yoder said reopening the hospital will be a long and costly process. It could take at least two years, he said, and cost at least $15 million. That’s why, to him, the new bills feel largely symbolic.

“I think it's more optical than anything,” Yoder said. “That it’s just, ‘hey, we're putting it out there.’ Might want to call it political points, I guess.”

Glenn County Supervisor Monica Rossman shared Yoder’s frustration over how long things have taken, but she said she’s encouraged to see LaMalfa continuing to push for the hospital.

“He has absolutely been 100% with us from the beginning,” Rossman said.

Rossman said she only recently learned about Schiff getting involved, and called his involvement “better late than never.”

The hospital closure has been especially frightening for the 28,000 residents of Glenn County, she said, where neighbors often feel more like family.

“We are such a small community that we know everybody. We're related to literally everybody,” Rossman said. “That’s the scary part for us, is the patient, we know the face. It’s just not a number.”

What lawmakers hope could bring the hospital back

The new federal bills aim to fix the issue that shut down Glenn Medical — a three-mile difference that proved costly for the community. After nearly 25 years as a Critical Access Hospital, regulators determined the facility was only 32 miles from the nearest hospital in Colusa, falling short of the 35-mile minimum under federal rules to qualify as critical access.

Hospital leaders appealed, arguing federal officials used a rural back road that ambulances don’t use rather than a main route to make the calculation. Still, in August, CMS revoked the hospital’s designation.

Then last week, Sen. Adam Schiff announced he was teaming up with Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith of Miss. to introduce bipartisan legislation to reverse the hospital’s closure.

“It took some time to draft, to find other like-minded senators who want to address this, but we moved pretty darn quickly,” Schiff said. “We're going to continue to really press this to make sure that folks know that this really has an urgency about it.”

Schiff’s bill is focused on hospitals that were designated as critical access as of Jan. 1, 2024. It allows them to have their status reinstated if it was lost due to distance requirements. It would allow the hospitals to have the designation restored through Jan. 1, 2027.

North State Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa introduced his own legislation a day later, titled the “Rural Hospital Fairness Act.”

LaMalfa’s legislation would allow hospitals that had critical access designation prior to Jan. 1, 2002 and still held the title as of Dec. 31, 2024 to keep the designation. The hospital must also be the only hospital in the county to qualify.

LaMalfa said he’s been trying to work with CMS for months, but with little progress and plenty of challenges.

“We're just really upset that we haven't been able to get it the much simpler way of an executive action of just fixing it,” he said. “I'm just extremely frustrated that it wasn't a simpler deal.”

Much of the concern stems from the fact that CMS made the incorrect determination in the first place. It’s an issue Schiff says goes far beyond Glenn Medical.

“So many other rural hospitals are also on the edge of failure, we're just not providing the kind of financial support, reimbursement rates and additional assistance that rural hospitals need to stay open,” he said.

Looking ahead

Schiff couldn’t give an exact timeline for when the legislation could go through, but he said he remained hopeful that there was a way to expedite it.

LaMalfa said he wants to find “a fast-moving vehicle” to park his bill on. And he pointed to the fact that he and Schiff were working together.

“Since Senator Schiff and me are both trying, from both sides of the aisle in both houses, I hope so,” he said. “Again, we got good momentum with bipartisanship.”

Though LaMalfa still wondered, “But will it save them? Will it be in time?”

It’s the same question many in Glenn County are asking — whether these efforts will come soon enough to bring back their hospital, or to save them or their neighbors when they need it most.