At stake is the long-term health care available to Salinas residents and what entity will provide it. Will Salinas Valley Memorial Healthcare System: continue as is, partner with Natividad Medical Center, or sell outright to Healthcare Corporation of America? After an arduous year-long process, the SVMH board of directors decided in March to proceed to what is called Stage 2—a fact-finding exercise in which the suitors and hospital dig deeper into each other's backgrounds and books to see what might work.