Paradise Valley Hospital Fears Fallout of Closing

There’s trouble in Paradise these days.

Paradise Valley Hospital, a 210-bed National City institution that already has a disproportionate share of non-paying patients, faces the prospect of losing more money if San Diego Physicians & Surgeons Hospital closes.

“We’re not real thrilled with it,” said Larry Zumstein, vice president for finance, about the potential. “We see us picking up a lot of their patients. That would have a disastrous effect on us.”

That is because the hospital has already been having trouble finding emergency-room doctors willing to be on call because they frequently receive little or no payment when the patients are covered by government programs or are uninsured, Zumstein said.

About 30% of the hospital’s patients are indigents covered by Medi-Cal or are medically indigent working poor, covered by the county medical services program. That is double the countywide average for such patients.

Domino Waiting to Fall?

“We have difficulty at times filling in our backup panel in our emergency room,” Zumstein said, referring to the availability of physicians.

This problem echoes one faced by Palomar Medical Center in Escondido, which has had trouble finding doctors to staff its trauma unit because of the high rate of non-paying patients there.

Zumstein fears Paradise Valley will have to begin paying emergency-room doctors to be on call. Paying one orthopedist $350 a day, 365 days a year would amount to $127,750--and that’s just for one specialty, he noted.

Paradise Valley, which is affiliated with Adventist Health Systems West, thus could be another domino waiting to fall if Physicians & Surgeons does, suggested Paul B. Simms, deputy director for physical health services for the Department of Health Services. Yet Paradise Valley serves a community that is not impoverished.

“It is not simply the poor that are jeopardized by these policies of learning to do more with less,” Simms said. “What happens if Paradise Valley goes? Where does it stop?” Simms asked. “How many hospitals have to fall for the community to say enough is enough?”