Kino Hospital collection

In its June 1994 report the Blue Ribbon Health Care Delivery System Commission (appointed by the Pima County Board of Supervisors) recommended that Pima County develop a fully integrated public health system, maintain Kino Community Hospital as a full-service public hospital and establish a community-based governance body to provide the needed direction and support for the county’s health system. As part of the implementation process, the Commission recommended the establishment of an interim decision-making body – the Pima County Integrated Health Care System Coordinating Council – to assume oversight until the legal requirements could be put in place to establish the community-based governance body.

Based on Board of Supervisors action taken June 21, 1994 a Pima County Integrated Health Care System Coordinating Council (SCC) was formed. The SCC’s work culminated in its August 1997 proposal to the Board of Supervisors “relative to the Health System Budget, with the stipulated shift in oversight responsibility to the Health System’s Chief Executive Officer who shall report through the newly formed quasi-governance body to the Board of Supervisors.” The SCC’s recommendations were adopted by the Board of Supervisors on March 3, 1998 including the formation of the new governance body, the Pima Health Care System Commission (PHCSC). Dr. Richard Carmona was appointed Interim CEO and later that year was made CEO (he resigned the position in July 1999). The PHCSC was disbanded around February 2000. Following continued financial difficulties and based on a multiyear agreement between the Board of Supervisors and University Physicians, Inc. (UPI), the physician faculty practice for the University of Arizona College of Medicine, the County's state license authorizing operation of the hospital was transferred to UPI on June 16, 2004.