No money changed hands. Rather, the grant is in lieu of six years' back rent owed by the center to Stanford after the prestigious Peninsula medical center bowed out of the operation in 2001.
The grant concludes the formal, fiscal relationship between the two entities but leaves the local center with a financial clean slate upon which to build for the future.
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Stanford acquired the practice in the mid-1990s and leased half of the building while San Mateo County leased the other half, on rented land. Eventually Stanford lost money on the center following a 1997 congressional shift in the Medicare reimbursement structure.
In a series of urgent meetings focused on retaining the community's medical facility, which included Ascher, Half Moon Bay Coastside Chamber of Commerce and Visitors' Bureau Executive Director Charise McHugh, Half Moon Bay City Councilwoman Bonnie McClung, local businessmen Steve Wilson and Patrick Ryan, doctors Lorraine Page and the late Eve Gorn, a solution emerged by which the center would become a nonprofit.
A board was formed under new CEO Robert Harless. Stanford's lease of the building continued, and the new Coastside Family Medical Center assumed the role of sublessee in late 2000.
In the intervening years, the center fell in arrears on rent. In an October 2007 meeting that included Wilson, McHugh and Ascher, Stanford Hospital officials proposed a grant in the amount of the rent owed.
"Stanford said, 'We're in a position to help and we're going to do it,'" Ascher said. "There was an understanding on the part of Stanford that, given who they are and what they stand for, they didn't want to see this facility go away.
"This is one of those wonderful things in which everybody goes away with something," Ascher said.
The elimination of the back rent clears the way for the center to seek future grants, because it shifts the center from the position of a financial loss to one of breaking even, said Ascher, who credited that boon to Harless,
With the grant, the fiscal obligations between Stanford and the local center are ended, but a medical relationship remains.
When Stanford transferred medical responsibilities to the center, Mills-Peninsula Health Services stepped in, to ease the transition and provide support. Today, Mills-Peninsula contracts with the center for X-ray and lab services, and its clinicians are available for referrals unless patients choose Stanford doctors.
"The reference relationship still continues to this day," said Ascher.
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