Century City Hospital Shutters ER Unit

People in Century City with life-threatening illnesses will now have to go farther to find an emergency room.

Los Angeles County health officials said Monday that the ER at Century City Hospital will be closed for at least five months. In the meantime, area residents will have to go to other hospitals.

In December, after being unable to negotiate a new lease for the building, Tenet Healthcare Corp. decided to shut down the hospital’s emergency room. The remainder of the hospital will close April 30.

Officials with Salus Surgical Group, in Beverly Hills, which is in the midst of taking over the hospital, have said they plan to renovate the facility and reopen the hospital and emergency room in the fall.

“Century City isn’t a huge player,” said Carol Gunter, the director of Los Angeles County’s Emergency Medical Services Agency. “But it’s one of those things that, if you just keep adding patients to ERs at other hospitals, they could be overwhelmed.”

More than 11,000 patients were treated at Century City’s emergency room in 2001, according to the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development.

That’s a fraction of the 2.8 million emergency room visits made in Los Angeles County in 2001, the last year for which statistics are available.

The hospital also receives about six ambulances each day combined from the Los Angeles Fire Department and the city of Beverly Hills.

But Gunter and other health officials are worried that the shutdown could mean longer travel times for area residents seeking emergency care.

A person who lives near Century City Hospital will have to navigate congested Westside streets to reach one of four other area ERs -- provided those facilities are accepting patients.

The medical centers -- Brotman in Culver City, UCLA in Westwood, and Cedars Sinai and Midway, both in the midcity area -- are all located about three miles from Century City.

But the time it takes to drive could be anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes.

Twenty emergency rooms in Southern California have closed in the last 15 years, while only four have opened, Gunter said.

At the same time, the number of patients treated has surged for a variety of reasons, including an increase in the uninsured and a growing number of people who can’t get time off work during the day to seek medical care.

Tenet is also in the midst of selling 18 hospitals in Southern California, including Brotman and Midway.