Centinela to Halt Care of Paramedic Patients

Citing mounting losses incurred by treating patients unable to pay, Inglewood’s Centinela Hospital Medical Center said Tuesday it will stop accepting patients from public ambulances April 26.

The hospital said it has notified the county Department of Health Services of its intention to “downlicense” its emergency room to stand-by status, meaning it “will no longer be staffed to provide emergency services to patients transported by paramedic ambulances.”

The hospital said it would be willing to reconsider its decision if the state and county “assume their responsibility” and provide long-term funding to pay for treatment provided indigent patients.

Centinela, a 403-bed nonprofit hospital, will continue to treat emergency patients who walk in, are ambulatory or who arrive in private ambulances.

Hospital officials said “the magnitude and disproportionate number of indigent and government-sponsored patients seeking care through the hospital emergency room” is the reason for its decision.

“The hospital has endured substantial and uncontrollable financial losses through its emergency department, with total hospital-wide bad debt and charity figures nearly tripling since 1984 to a 1988 high of approximately $8.5 million,” the statement said.

Hospital officials said similar losses for five of 11 major hospitals in the area were less than $1.6 million, three had losses of less than $3.7 million and one $5.8 million. The hospitals were not identified.

Along with the losses already incurred, officials at Centinela see nothing but red ink in its emergency room’s future.

“Uncompensated care losses are expected to continue to escalate at an uncontrollable rate,” officials said, as a result of the growing number of indigents, more cuts in reimbursements, changes in patient transfer policies, county hospitals’ “growing inability to accept appropriate transfer patients” and the closing of other emergency rooms across the county.

County and state health officials could not be reached for comment Tuesday night.

Centinela President Russell Stromberg said that even with the cutback, “Centinela Hospital will continue to have one of the highest charity loads in the county. It’s unfortunate, but since it is unfair and improper to pass the costs of treating the indigent and government-sponsored patients on to our insured and private pay patients, we cannot continue” to accept patients from public ambulances.

The move is certain to place even greater strain on Los Angeles County’s emergency services network, which came precipitously close to collapse in May when California Medical Center officials announced plans to close their emergency room in downtown Los Angeles to public ambulances.

State and local health officials were able to stave off that potential catastrophe by pumping between $3 million and $4 million into the medical center, which said its emergency room had been responsible for losses of up to $500,000 a month.