The State : Medical Unit’s Policy Probed

The state’s Health Services Division announced Monday that it will investigate UC Irvine Medical Center’s unprecedented “obstetrical diversion” policy, in which women in labor are turned away if the facility is overcrowded. “The intent of the law is to ensure that a woman in labor can get help. . . . It doesn’t say you can send them away,” said Dr. Patricia E. Chase, consultant to the state’s Licensing and Certification Division, the enforcement arm of the Health Services Division which oversees hospitals. “I’ve clearly got some concerns with this (new policy),” said Chase, who is charged with enforcing the state’s “anti-patient-dumping law.” The law, passed last year, makes it illegal to turn away emergency patients to other hospitals. The medical center, which instituted the policy over the weekend, has long complained that it is burdened with most of the county’s indigent patients. The only exception to the new policy would be women who have received pre-natal care at UCI Medical.