Emergency Room Open

Santa Teresita Hospital’s emergency room will remain open at least until the end of March, the hospital’s board of directors decided at a meeting Tuesday.

Executive Vice President Mike Costello said he expects state and county officials to approve within a few weeks a plan that would subsidize emergency room losses.

Hospital officials had earlier said they would close the emergency room to patients brought in by paramedics beginning March 1, unless the plan had been approved by then.

In another matter, Santa Teresita’s request to convert 23 hospital beds for use in the hospital-run nursing home was submitted to the county Health Services Department in August, Costello said. But it wasn’t until Tuesday morning that the hospital’s plans for related architectural changes were reviewed by the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development, in the second stage of the approval process.

The beds have been unused in the hospital because of a lack of personnel, but they can be used in the nursing home because that facility is not required to be as intensively staffed, he said.

Costello said the board’s Tuesday meeting with the state planning department was arranged by the office of Assemblyman Richard Mountjoy (R-Arcadia).

It was part of an attempt by the offices of Mountjoy, county Supervisor Pete Schabarum, state Sen. Newton Russell (R-Glendale) and city officials from Duarte, Monrovia and Bradbury to forestall the emergency room closure.