The Good Samaritan Charitable Trust is preparing a plan to use the interest on $56 million in profits from the sale of Good Samaritan Hospital System to fight health-related problems in Santa Clara County.
As a community task force forges plans to put the money to work on countywide health problems, the trust is meeting with county supervisors to garner support.
Good Sam sold its assets to Columbia HCA in January 1996. It established a trust foundation to hold the $56 million and use the interest to fund health programs in Santa Clara County.
Support from the board of supervisors may be key in selling the plan to the state attorney general, said Gary Allen, president of the trust's governing board. The attorney general can sue to stop the charity's planned programs if he thinks they don't follow the state laws that pertain to sales of nonprofit hospitals to private interests.
Members of the board of supervisors have expressed interest in using the money to provide health care for indigents.
Allen said the type of program the trust wants to set up might use its $3-$4 million annual budget to save the county $30 million in yearly expenses.
The trust would fight health-related problems and their high costs by fighting the sources of the county's most expensive health problems, Allen said.
He used the example of a teen education and counseling program that would cut down teen pregnancies--and the dollars the county would have to spend later to support the parents and child. Allen said many charitable programs don't have such a synergistic impact. That's like having a clogged sink and just mopping up the floor forever, he said.
The trust will give part of its yearly budget to local programs and will use some money to run its own programs, some of which it's already funding.
The trust's major areas of concern will probably be poor people, homeless adults and anyone else without health care. The trust's final plan must be submitted to the attorney general's office by Nov. 18.
A forum for public discussion of the plan will take place late in October.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, October 2, 1996.
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