State Clears 9 Hospitals That Barred Dying Man

State health officials on Tuesday cleared nine Southern California hospitals of wrongdoing in refusing to admit a dying Westminster man.

Relatives of 43-year-old Juan Jimenez Collado had charged that he would have survived if he had been transferred from an Imperial County hospital to a better-equipped urban hospital. They also complained that hospitals in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties had rejected Jimenez because he did not have private health insurance.

But Teresa Hawkes, a deputy director at the state Department of Health Services, said those conclusions were wrong. Rather, she said, a monthlong state investigation showed that Jimenez was too ill and unstable to be moved.

Stepson’s View Unchanged

“It is the collective opinion from our investigators in San Diego, Santa Ana and Los Angeles that neither Pioneers Memorial Hospital (in Brawley) nor the nine hospitals that refused transfer attempts were in violation” of state law, Hawkes said. Also, she reported, “our conclusion is that had the attempt to transfer Mr. Jimenez been successful, in all likelihood the result would have been the same. He would have died.”

Jimenez’s stepson, David Carillo, was startled by the finding. He said the family would continue with a lawsuit against the hospitals that rejected Jimenez.

“Let the state conclude what they want,” he said bitterly. State officials may wish “to brush this under the rug,” Carillo said, but he is still convinced that Jimenez did not get care because he did not have insurance.

The nine hospitals that were exonerated are UCI Medical Center in Orange, Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center, St. Joseph Hospital in Orange and United Western Medical Center-Santa Ana; UC San Diego Medical Center, Donald N. Sharp Memorial Hospital, Grossmont Hospital and Mercy Hospital in San Diego County, and UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles County. Officials at these hospitals had declined to accept Jimenez, saying they were full, had no attending physician to accept the transfer, were not a Medi-Cal hospital or could not take a patient from another county.

Jimenez was struck by a hit-and-run driver on May 30 after stopping his overheated truck on California 111 north of Niland in Imperial County and getting out to work on its engine. He was taken to the 80-bed Pioneers Memorial Hospital with massive head injuries and 19 fractures, authorities said.

Hawkes praised Pioneers for making a “heroic” attempt to save Jimenez’s life. As many as 15 doctors there worked on him as he battled shock, infections, kidney failure, respiratory failure and internal bleeding, she said. On June 18, 20 days after the accident, Jimenez died.

No Surgeon Found

Hawkes said that five days after the accident, Pioneers tried to transfer Jimenez to a larger hospital. Officials at Sharp Hospital initially agreed to take him but then could not find an orthopedic surgeon to accept him, as transfer procedures require, state licensing officials Ernest Trujillo, Jacqueline A. Lincer and Dr. Catherine F. Canada reported in a memo to Hawkes.

“The remaining eight general acute hospitals contacted by Pioneers Hospital had either similar transfer criteria or were not a Medi-Cal contract hospital or a trauma center,” their memo says.

Hawkes said she wanted to emphasize that Jimenez got good care at Pioneers. Also, she said, it was not true that other hospitals refused to take him because of his inability to pay.

“Not at all,” Hawkes said. “He was a very very sick man, probably terminal” the day he was admitted to Pioneers.