Hospital Won’t Be Charged for Not Treating 2 Patients

Sherman Oaks Community Hospital will not face criminal charges for refusing to provide emergency treatment to two patients because there is no proof that the hospital evaluated its patients’ ability to pay before deciding whether to treat them, the Los Angeles city attorney’s office said Wednesday.

“The investigation found there really was no basis for finding fault with what Sherman Oaks did,” said Deputy City Atty. Ellen R. Pais, who handled the case. “It wasn’t that big a deal.”

The county Department of Health Services had requested the investigation in December after an examination of hospital records. The two incidents occurred last year, in March and July.

According to a health investigator’s report last year, “The emergency room has a financial triage system in place. Patients are routinely questioned regarding their ability to pay before a medical evaluation is performed.”

Separate Records

Investigators suspected such a problem because the hospital was keeping a separate set of records for patients who were being turned away from the emergency room, Pais said. But the hospital changed its record-keeping procedures after it was cited by the health department in September, she said.

Under the new records system, a medical chart is prepared for each patient, assuring that “a reasonable assessment” of the patient’s condition is made, Pais said.

County health officials are “satisfied at this time” that the hospital is in substantial compliance with state law, said Robert L. Karp, program manager for the health facilities division of the county Health Services Department. State law requires hospitals to treat patients suffering from health emergencies regardless of their ability to pay.

The allegations arose as health officials investigated the case of a 25-year-old transient woman suffering from a spider bite last July, authorities said. The woman went to Sherman Oaks Community Hospital but was referred to the county’s Olive View Medical Center in Sylmar, where she complained of chest pains and doctors determined she needed immediate medical care.

Different Information

“Olive View was upset that Sherman Oaks hadn’t treated her, but she had not given the Sherman Oaks people the same information that she gave to Olive View,” Pais said.

In November, health investigators notified the hospital that they were investigating a second case in which a patient had been turned away from the Sherman Oaks hospital after seeking emergency treatment. An uninsured 18-year-old man was told to go elsewhere after walking into the emergency room in March, 1987, complaining of injuries he received when he fell off a bicycle, Pais said.

He was treated at Olive View for a palm abrasion and later complained to health officials about being refused treatment at Sherman Oaks Community, officials said.

“There wasn’t any information to show there was an emergency,” Pais said. “There was no medical evidence supporting his statement.”

Health officials presented the spider bite and bicycle injury cases, along with the hospital’s former record-keeping procedures, to the city attorney’s office in December, Pais said. But because the hospital had changed its record-keeping procedures, and because the hospital staff reasonably viewed the two incidents as non-emergencies, a criminal case was not pursued, she said.

M. Marc Goldberg, Sherman Oaks Community Hospital’s chief executive officer, said he never doubted that the hospital did not act criminally.

“The hospital has always treated an emergency . . . on a medical need basis and not on a financial basis,” Goldberg said.