Staff of Closed Hospital Alleges Mismanagement, Failure to Pay

About 100 former employees of the closed Lake View Medical Center demonstrated in front of the hospital Thursday, complaining that are not being paid for their last two weeks of work and alleging that the hospital was mismanaged in the last year.

The workers, including physicians, registered nurses and janitors, carried banners with messages such as: “Where did all the money go,” and banged on the medical center’s windows for about an hour as hospital administrators met inside.

The protesters, who were among 250 people put out of work when the hospital announced Monday that it was closing after 25 years, said they are each owed between several hundred and several thousand dollars in wages, vacation pay and various benefits.

Brad Callahan, a former nursing supervisor who acted as spokesman for the workers, said that, after the 145-bed hospital filed for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code in October, 1984, hospital administrators bought “needless items that shouldn’t have been bought by a struggling institution.”

Callahan said workers would have received their last checks if “excessive amounts of medical supplies” and costly hospital furnishings had not been purchased.

“They said Chapter 11 doesn’t mean anything and that we had unlimited credit and a clean slate,” said Vee Fasciotti, a registered nurse at the Lake View Terrace hospital since it opened. “We started to wonder what was going on when they started buying everything.”

Hospital administrator Jeff Hausler, who has been in charge of the facility since Dallas-based Republic Health Care Corp. took over its management after the bankruptcy filing, refused to comment Thursday on the workers’ statements.

Earlier this week, Hausler said the hospital has enough money to cover the last paychecks, which are due today. The workers, however, said they had been told otherwise.

Robert Tiernan, a spokesman for Local 399 of the Service Employees International Union, said he will try to secure the workers’ wages by filing a claim as a preferred creditor in bankruptcy court. But he said he is skeptical that workers will receive their money because “it appears the hospital has gone belly up and there’s no cash left.”

Local 399 represents about 135 technicians, vocational nurses and support staff, Tiernan said.

Much Competition

Lake View Medical Center, a nonprofit facility on Eldridge Avenue, had been in financial trouble for several years as competition from the Valley’s 27 other hospitals increased. It was founded in 1960 as Pacoima Memorial Hospital and had been serving primarily Medi-Cal patients from the surrounding area.

The hospital was destroyed in the 1971 Sylmar earthquake and has debts of about $10 million from bonds that were used to rebuild the facility, officials said.

The 45 patients at the hospital when the closure was announced were discharged or transferred to other hospitals in the area.