UCI Medical Center Closure Threatened

As a faculty member of the UC Irvine College of Medicine, I am glad to see that the financial crisis at UCI Medical Center is finally getting the attention it deserves.

The medical center is an extension of the academic mission of the College of Medicine. It is not a primary care institution. The value of the future health professional trained at UCI is in large part based on how much exposure that person has to the most complicated and puzzling medical problems. In order to receive that training, the medical center must admit patients who require the multidisciplinary approach that only a teaching hospital can bring. Overloading the hospital with primary care patients is inappropriate to a teaching institution.

We all recognize the financial burden borne by hospitals that treat public patients to be the result of chronic underfunding of indigent medical care programs for years. It has been a decision on the part of state and federal governments to cut down on the appropriations given to health care while ignoring their escalating cost. Although the state of California claims proudly to have reduced its expenditures, health care deliverers like UCI Medical Center are in serious danger of bankruptcy. Ignoring the inconsistency will cause the entire system to break down. We in Orange County are seeing that happen.

I support the officials at UCI to resist carrying the burden of indigent care for the county. UCI Medical Center is a teaching hospital, responsible to the University of California for excellence in education. The financial burden it has been handed as a result of lack of community and government action makes it impossible to meet this objective.

KYM A. SALNESS, M.D.

Director

Emergency Services

UCI Medical Center