Medical Emergency

Cuts could devastate Lodi Memorial Hospital

About Town – FRIDAY, 5/23/25

Proposed cuts to Medi-Cal will significantly impact Adventist Health Lodi Memorial Hospital, according to Scott Nariyoshi, Memorial’s public information officer. He says most of the hospital’s emergency room patients are on Medicaid (Medi-Cal), Medicare, or are uninsured. “If illegal aliens are excluded from Medi-Cal moving forward, this proposed change will dramatically increase the number of uninsured patients we care for at our hospital and increase our level of uncompensated care. This will result in sustained financial losses that will significantly impact our ability to provide timely access to healthcare for our community,” says Nariyoshi. “We are particularly concerned about several provisions in the House reconciliation bill and their potential impact on safety-net and rural hospitals,” he adds. For the past 15 years California hospitals have benefitted from the Hospital Quality Assurance Fee (HQAF) program, which “provides funding for supplemental payments to California hospitals that serve Medi-Cal and uninsured patients.” Lodi Memorial CEO Brooke McCollough told this column a couple years ago that the hospital is marginally profitable thanks to all the elective surgeries they perform. “Any cuts to Medicaid will severely limit our patients’ ability to access care and will hurt our ability to provide care for vulnerable patients – and any patients in the communities we serve,” says Nariyoshi.

FIRE’S OUT: Blaze Pizza in the Walmart shopping center has permanently closed. The pizzeria featured pizza pies finished in a flash (180 seconds), made with “made-from-scratch dough.” Blaze is the second fast-food restaurant closure in the center. Across the way, Rubio’s Coastal Grill closed about a year ago. Indian Curry and Grill opened in that space shortly thereafter.

BACK THEN: After our mention of the Lakewood Mall changing hands