Drastic setback for OC hospital

Anaheim General Hospital, which cares for a large share of Orange County’s poor, has lost its national quality accreditation in the wake of scores of safety citations by three sets of regulators.

The 143-bed hospital has been struggling financially and the loss in standing could make matters worse by jeopardizing its ability to attract privately insured patients.

Anaheim General was warned earlier this year that it could lose its accreditation from the Joint Commission, a private organization that inspects and accredits most of the nation’s private hospitals. The hospital’s owner, Pacific Health Corp. of Tustin, said in August that the problems that led to the warning had been corrected.

The commission ultimately withdrew Anaheim General’s accreditation after concluding that conditions found during a March inspection posed a threat to patients.

Pacific Health President Jim Young did not return a call seeking comment, and the hospital declined to take a call inquiring about its accreditation.

Public officials expressed concern over the development.

“Anaheim General serves a lot of people,” said City Councilwoman Lorri Galloway. “It would be a travesty if it could no longer operate. But I suppose it would be worse if it would operate unsafely.”

“We’re concerned,” said David Thiessen, chief of quality management for the Orange County Healthcare Agency, which contracts with local hospitals, including Anaheim General, to care for the indigent. “We’re obviously concerned that the system of medical care remain intact.”

As for Anaheim General, he said, “We want them to come up to standards.”

The commission’s move, a rare occurrence, is the latest blow to the beleaguered hospital. The loss of accreditation, along with numerous safety citations this year, places its public and private funding at risk. The hospital is not expected to close and has said it is appealing the findings.

Inspectors from the U.S. Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services visited Anaheim General in February and found that it put patients “at immediate jeopardy” by not having life-saving medications available, by having insufficient emergency food and water supplies and by failing to ensure the safety of its psychiatric patients.

Joint Commission inspectors visited in March and immediately slapped the hospital with a preliminary denial of accreditation after finding inadequate procedures for preventing infections, poorly inspected medical equipment, fire safety violations and improperly stored medications.

In all, the commission found 47 safety deficiencies, an unusually high number for such surveys, local hospital experts say. Hospitals must have fewer than 18 deficiencies to keep their full accreditation, according to the commission’s guidelines. The final accreditation denial took effect Nov. 21.

The hospital was fined by the state Department of Public Health in August for problems that the agency concluded had caused or could have caused serious injury or death to patients.

Specifically, state officials cited Anaheim General for failing to ensure that medical devices were safe and functioning within manufacturer’s guidelines, for not preventing access to dangerous items, for failing to protect patients from extreme temperatures and for failing to keep medications properly refrigerated.

Pacific Health’s Young told The Times last summer that the hospital had corrected all the problems cited by regulators. The hospital’s “current state is excellent,” he said

Pacific Health also is the target of a lawsuit by Los Angeles City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo that contends the company and two of its hospitals -- though not Anaheim General -- were part of a scheme to defraud the Medi-Cal and Medicare programs out of millions of dollars.

The suit said the hospitals used unfair practices to fill empty beds by paying indigent people to stay in the hospitals.

Pacific Health has said it is cooperating with authorities and believes that it will be cleared of any wrongdoing.

Amid all these problems, California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown in August rejected Pacific Health’s $57-million bid to buy Anaheim Memorial Medical Center, a larger hospital six miles across town.

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lisa.girion@latimes.com

ron.lin@latimes.com