Fullerton Hospital Begins Shutdown After Steady Losses

Unable to stem its losses, Fullerton Community Hospital began closing its doors Thursday, forcing about 10 patients to leave the hospital and idling about 100 nurses and other workers.

Like many hospitals, Fullerton Community has experienced a shortage of patient admissions and shortened lengths of stay since the introduction three years ago of tighter Medicare reimbursement rules. In recent months, the 56-bed facility had been suffering from a “lack of activity,” said Dan Woolf, its administrator.

Since its purchase in 1980 by nonprofit Anaheim Memorial Hospital Medical Centers Inc. for $4.3 million, Fullerton Community has racked up steady losses of about $100,000 a month, said Katherine Dopler, an Anaheim Memorial spokeswoman.

For more than a year now, Anaheim Memorial has been negotiating the sale of Fullerton Community to Encino-based Nu-Med Inc. However, Nu-Med apparently attempted to back out of the purchase, triggering a series of suits and countersuits between the two companies.

Nu-Med officials Thursday declined to elaborate either on the stalled negotiations for the purchase of Fullerton Community or on the lawsuits. However, a spokesman for the hospital management company said, “We feel we are not obliged to purchase the hospital.”

Fullerton Community had about 10 patients at the beginning of this week, all of whom had been either discharged or transferred to other hospitals by Thursday.