Letter to the Community

from Ron Werft, President and CEO, and
Marshall Rose, Board President

May 25, 2005 The recent power outage at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital was a true test of our disaster response system. Although extremely serious and more than a temporary inconvenience for patients and visitors, we want to assure the community that patient safety was our absolute focus and that nothing is more important to us.

All backup procedures--for which we practice regularly at each of our hospitals--immediately went into operation. During the 70-minute electrical outage on May 11, patient care continued uninterrupted as staff responded quickly and appropriately to the needs of their patients. The response by staff, physicians, and volunteers was impressive, and patients were safely protected throughout the ordeal.

Both Cottage and Southern California Edison have conducted thorough investigations, neither of which has uncovered the actual cause of damage to our main electrical switch. The emergency generators that failed when heat caused the fire sprinklers to activate are now fully functional. We also have an additional backup generator located outside the generator room. This redundant system will remain in effect until ventilation improvements are implemented. We are also assuring that the Energy Center for the new hospital is designed to prevent a similar occurrence in the future.

We want to express sincere appreciation and thanks to all of our employees, physicians, and volunteers whose timely, calm and appropriate response and teamwork made the vital difference in what could have been a very difficult situation. We also want to acknowledge the disruption to patients and visitors and thank them for their understanding. Most importantly, we want to assure the community that all necessary precautions have been taken. Please be assured that our number one consideration throughout this incident was the safety of our patients. That priority remains unchanged for all of us here at Cottage.

Marshall Rose, Board Chair

Ron Werft, President and CEO

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