Hospital eliminates eye surgeries

Porterville eye surgeon Wallace Ruminson may ring in the new year without a space to operate in town.

For the past few years, he has done procedures at Sierra View District Hospitals’ outpatient surgery center, which has announced it is ridding of ophthalmology services alltogether. The displacement will affect the approximately 20 people Ruminson operates on each month, all of them in critical need of their vision.

The outpatient center is being renovated, forcing physicians to treat their patients in the hospital’s main operation room, which hospital officials say will be too crowded to house the “low” volume of eye surgery patients that can take advantage of the  services provided by eye centers in neighboring communities. Ruminson met with hospital representatives Thursday afternoon, who told him they would consider his request to reverse the decision.

“People in the community are the ones who are most impacted,” he said. “If you have a procedure like this that is already in place, you should never take it away.”

Ruminson is one of two other ophthalmologists who is using the outpatient facility, referred to as the Ambulatory Surgery Department, one of which is from Porterville.

The other specialists who use the facility, which include an OB/GYN and two ear, nose and throat doctors, will continue to operate at the hospital.

“A ‘district’ is supposed to represent the health care needs of the people in this area,” he said.  “Everything is important.”

Ruminson’s wife Patti Ruminson said that a majority of his patients are senior citizens who will lose their independence if their drivers licenses are taken away due to poor vision.

“They mainly come to us when they can’t pass their DMV,” she said.

Half of the 700 cases housed in the Ambulatory Surgery Department are ophthalmology. Those 700 outpatient cases, however, have been shadowed by the increasing number of a different type of procedure. To accommodate the 27 percent rise in the number of people whose internal organs have been checked out (endoscopy procedures) in the past two years, the Ambulatory Surgery Department will be remodeled and closed to eye surgeries indefinitely beginning Jan. 31.

“Over the past fifteen years, industrywide, the standard has been to shift ophthalmology cases from hospitals to private eye centers,” a press release from Sierra View states. “Private ophthalmologists have joined together in create eye centers that focus entirely upon diseases of the eye and utilize the latest and most advanced equipment and technology.”

Ruminson, however, was pleased with Sierra View’s equipment, he referred to it as “state of the art.”

The hospital made its decision Oct. 27, and announced it Nov. 10, giving ophthalmologists plenty of notice to tell their patients, according to spokeswoman Ramona Contreras.

If the decision is not reversed, Ruminson says he will continue to do surgery, by either possibly building his own facility — a project with a lengthy timeline — or treat his patients in another city, most likely Visalia.  

Contact Jenna Chandler at 784-5000, Ext. 1050, or jchandler@portervillerecorder.com.