About White Memorial

Keeping Our Doors Open for Future Generations

Over several years in the late 1980s, a high Medi-Cal¹ and uninsured population, combined with low reimbursements, added up to a significant debt for WMMC. The hospital, on the brink of bankruptcy or sale, borrowed approximately $20 million for ongoing operations from our parent company, Adventist Health, and our other system hospitals.

In 1991, California passed legislation to give annual supplemental payments to hospitals, including WMMC, that provide health care to a disproportionate share of the state’s low-income and uninsured patients. Most hospitals that received these supplemental payments chose to include them in their overall revenue stream, and many for-profit hospitals returned them to shareholders each year as part of their surplus. But WMMC retained the services of our auditing firm, Ernst & Young, to advise the hospital on what to do with these additional payments. WMMC paid off its debts and then put a portion of that money in the bank, to make sure it could keep its doors open far into the future.

Today, WMMC depends on the investment income from these savings for its sustainability. During the past 16 years that WMMC has received these supplemental payments, our Medi-Cal reimbursement rates have only marginally increased. Yet we continue to care for a high number of low-income and uninsured patients. If not for the investment income provided by these supplemental payments, the hospital would have operated at a loss for every year stretching back to the 1990s.

Instead, WMMC has invested millions of these dollars in projects and programs that benefit the community. In the mid-1990s and again in 2004, the hospital invested in two medical office buildings to provide much-needed community access to services such as outpatient diagnostics and imaging, and office space for physicians who provide quality care in our neighborhood. And as a teaching hospital, one of the most important investments we make is in our residency programs, which place special emphasis on training primary care physicians to practice in Medically Underserved Areas like ours.

Now the hospital is investing millions more with the opening of the new specialty care tower and the ongoing campus renovation, the largest capital investment in the history of Adventist Health. Our savings, of which we have been careful stewards, are helping us pay for this important project. With this project we are continuing to build a strong future for our hospital, while at the same time providing critical access to health care for our community.

View our Economic Impact Statement (PDF).

¹Medi-Cal is California’s version of Medicaid, the federal health insurance program for low-income families.