Lindsay District Hospital
Lindsay District Hospital
Having a hospital is part of the fabric of Lindsay’s history as well. Lindsay’s first hospital dates back to the Great Depression but the Lindsay Hospital District was formed in 1951 following the formation of the Association of California Healthcare Districts and the prior passage of the Local Hospital District Law in 1945. The law allowed rural communities to form special tax districts to assess property taxes and, in turn, fund the building of hospitals at a time when many in the Western United States had limited access to hospitals and transportation to hospitals in other cities. From the 1960s through the 1980s, the Lindsay Gazette archives refer to Lindsay as one of the top rural hospitals in the State. Over that time, the hospital grew from 10 beds with a staff of five doctors to 100 beds with a staff of 18 physicians.
Wollenman, past hospital board member, said decisions the board made when the hospital was open was very different than those of a district after the hospital had closed.
“The Board at that time was more involved with trying to raise money for certain things,” she said. “And the doctors’ needs heavily influenced the board’s decisions.”
After a string of mergers and buyouts by larger hospitals in the late 1980s and 1990s, the Lindsay Hospital closed in November 2000. Lindsay’s demise was part of larger trend in medicine where managed care and increasingly expensive technology created larger, regional hospitals and effectively cut rural hospitals out of the healthcare equation.
After the hospital closed, Wollenman and her fellow board members made the wise choice to continue the tax-funded hospital district without a functioning hospital.
“When the hospital closed it was a disaster,” she said. “If we didn’t keep the district going, all of that money would have been absorbed by the County and redistributed to other districts. We wanted to make sure that money stayed here and continued to help the people of Lindsay.”
The actual hospital building was raised in 2006 to make way for Wellness Center and adjacent Lindsay Aquatic Center that now sit at the corner of Sequoia Drive and Ono City Parkway. In what Wollenman considers the best decision she was part of during her tenure, the Hospital Board agreed in 2002 to fund operations at the Wellness Center for $233,721 per year.
