The Board of Supervisors approved a lease to turn the former Sears building into a facility for treating patients with overflowing COVID-19, but Santa Barbara County has never executed the agreement.
During the July increase in local cases and hospitalizations, the county saw the vacant store as a potential alternative care location for patients on the south coast.
The lease agreement, which the Board of Supervisors approved but was never executed, outlined a plan to modernize the building in a 200-bed healthcare unit to serve patients if the hospital system at the level of county was overwhelmed.
The La Cumbre Plaza building at 3845 State St. has been empty since Sears closed in January 2019.
“As for Sears as an alternative place of care, this is not the state’s direction at the moment,” Public Health Director Van Do-Reynoso said Tuesday.
“We currently have growth capabilities in our hospitals. If there is a need for us to have an alternative care place, we will partner and use what is available on the alternative care site SLO, if necessary, and that is a huge “if necessary”.
“At the moment, our hospitals are quite comfortable and prefer that any extension of patient care be done within their four walls and on their campus. The problem is getting staff. “
Patients in North County may be referred to the alternative care location established (but never used) at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo campus.
“When I looked at Sears as an option last year, it was a different time and another space in the pandemic. It is no longer recommended or preferred in our healthcare providers in the community or in the state, given what we know about the treatment of inpatients, ”said Do-Reynoso.
The supervisory board approved the lease of the property in July, but the county later decided not to enforce the agreement, Noozhawk, deputy director of general services Skip Gray, said Tuesday.
“Once it was established that the county no longer needed Sears property, we ended up not executing the lease agreement,” Gray said.
The agreement and letter of intent to rent the property included a “free holding period” until August, he said.
“The county has decided not to conclude the lease on August 28,” Gray said.
The county still has an agreement to use the Best Western hotel at 2220 Bath St. as an alternative care facility near Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, but this has not been activated, Gray said.
Hospitalization plans
Do-Reynoso said hospitals prefer to expand capacity in their own facilities, which they do with growth plans.
Hospitals report that they currently use 13 beds of intensive care units for patients with COVID-19. Approximately 64% of intensive care patients in the county have COVID-19.
With 211 patients in COVID-19 hospital, there are more than twice as many now compared to the peak summer that has worried officials to the point of pursuing alternative care locations.
Ron Werft, president and CEO of Cottage Health, last week described Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital’s work to convert the units to COVID-19 treatment areas and attract staff from other areas of the hospital.
There was a COVID-19 isolation unit operating at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital on Thanksgiving Day, and now there are five, including two ICU units, Werft said last week.
He added that one of the intensive care units has been transformed into a unit for the care of patients with COVID-19.
The current challenge is to equip staff more than physical beds, say public health and hospital officials.
“As we look at the growing demand for our hospitals in Santa Barbara, beds will not be the challenge, PPE and ventilators will not be the challenge,” Werft said. The problem is critical care staff.
“While we are engaged right now, beyond what we would normally see, the ability to identify, recruit and expand to this type of application is very challenging.”
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