The State - News from April 15, 1987

The federal government reversed its decision to cut off $24 million in Medicare funding to Brookside Hospital in San Pablo just eight hours before it was to have taken effect. The cutoff had been ordered on grounds that poor and uninsured patients were dumped on other hospitals, but Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Robert O’Connor said the reversal was ordered “because hospital emergency room practices were brought back into line with quality standards.” Nonetheless, he said, his department is withholding full federal approval of the hospital’s status and has ordered closer monitoring of procedures there. “This,” he said, “was an intolerable situation that should never have occurred.”