New Blow Suffered by Trauma Network

The Board of Directors of Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital in Whittier has voted to close the hospital’s trauma center, a move that threatens to leave a gaping hole in Los Angeles County’s beleaguered emergency services network.

Since the trauma system was set up three years ago, 10 of 23 hospitals have pulled out of the program, citing big financial losses caused partly by their treating large numbers of patients without medical insurance.

Less than two months ago, a San Fernando Valley hospital, St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Burbank, announced the planned closure of its trauma center. That facility is scheduled to close shortly.

Physicians’ Vote

County health official Virginia Price Hastings said Tuesday this latest defection from the trauma program came as “no shock” to her because officials at the 358-bed, nonprofit Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital had long complained of financial losses from trauma care. Last year, those losses amounted to about $2.5 million, sources said.

Hastings, who is in charge of the county’s prehospital care and trauma programs, said the Whittier hospital’s Board of Directors voted to close the trauma center at a meeting Monday night. But she said the hospital’s executive director, Lowell Smith, told her that no formal decision on the matter would be announced until later this week, after the hospital’s executive committee of physicians had voted on the matter.

Smith declined to be interviewed. But his secretary said he has scheduled a press conference for this morning.

Joseph H. Fairbanks Jr., president of the hospital board, and Dr. Dennis Koffer, chief of trauma services at Presbyterian Intercommunity, also declined to comment.

By law, the hospital must give the county 60 days notice before closing the trauma center.

Presbyterian Intercommunity’s trauma center is among five that have served the San Gabriel Valley. If it closes as expected, just one will remain--Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena. The three others that already have closed their trauma centers are Pomona Valley Community Hospital, Queen of the Valley Hospital in West Covina and Methodist Hospital of Southern California in Arcadia.

“It’s the San Gabriel Valley that’s going down the tubes pretty fast,” Hastings said, referring to the dwindling trauma care resources in that part of the county.

At Huntington Memorial, spokeswoman Anna Maria Repetti said, “This means there’s no longer a trauma system in the San Gabriel Valley. If we’re the only hospital left, it’s really not a system at all.”

Commitment Told

She said that Huntington is committed to providing trauma care, even though the service cost the hospital almost $2 million last year.

Hastings said that even if Presbyterian Intercommunity shuts down its trauma center, Huntington will not be asked to pick up the slack by increasing its trauma patient load. The hospital, she said, already is operating at capacity.

Patients who would have received trauma care in the past at Presbyterian Intercommunity instead will be taken to the closest emergency room, “where the kind of care they will get is uncertain and variable,” Hastings said.

Unlike trauma centers, emergency rooms are not required to have a surgeon and anesthesiologist on the premises at all times.