U.S. Agency Fears County-USC Is Fire Hazard : Safety: Officials order the installation of alarms and sprinklers at a cost that could reach $100 million.

Concerned that Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center is a dangerous fire hazard, federal health officials have ordered the county to install fire alarms and a sprinkler system throughout the aging plant at a cost that could reach as much as $100 million, the head of the medical center disclosed Thursday.

A 24-hour fire watch must be set up by hospital officials immediately, the federal officials ordered, and all exits must be cleared of gurneys, beds, equipment and carts that often clutter the medical center’s hallways due to overcrowding.

The orders come at a time when the county Board of Supervisors is already under pressure from federal authorities to remedy wide-ranging patient care problems at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center or face shut-off Dec. 21 of $60 million a year in public health care funds.

Officials at the U.S. Health Care Financing Administration have stated that unless fire alarms and sprinkler systems are installed at the four hospitals that make up the County-USC medical complex, the premises should be closed to patient care.

The medical center has been given until Jan. 2 to repond to the order, which requires that the repairs be made within two to five years.

“This is enormous pressure,” said Jerry Buckingham, executive director of the 1,860-bed medical center. “My guess is that it will cost $100 million to do what they recommend we do, if we can do it at all. This is a very big deal, by anybody’s standards.”

David Langness, vice president of the Hospital Council of Southern California, said the health care system in Los Angeles County is “entirely dependent upon the continuing existence of County-USC.”

“It’s unacceptable to have the federal government calling Los Angeles County’s biggest hospital a firetrap. That has to be fixed,” Langness said. He added that the local health care system has suffered from “years of neglect, and now the chickens are coming home to roost.”

As an interim measure, Health Care Financing Administration officials are requiring, among other things, that the medical center set up a “24-hour fire watch,” which Buckingham said would probably entail hiring numerous roving patrols to detect fires early on and implement evacuation plans.

“I don’t have the funds (to pay) for the fire watch, let alone everything else they want done,” Buckingham said.

Top county officials have known for years about the limitations of the medical center’s physical plant. A series of inspections during the last 18 months by state fire marshals, as well as by state and federal health officials, have set forth a numbing list of electrical and structural deficiencies at the medical center.

County officials have commissioned a long-range study to determine the cost of eventually replacing the facility, whose main General Hospital building dates to 1932. The other three hospital buildings were built in the ‘50s.

Federal authorities are demanding that fire problems at the medical center be remedied within two years at three of the hospitals--Women’s Hospital, Psychiatric Hospital and Pediatrics Pavilion. The main General Hospital was allowed five years to correct fire deficiencies.

This is a much tighter deadline than the 10 years that Buckingham had proposed earlier this year to federal authorities.

“The alarm has been sounded,” acknowledged Supervisor Ed Edelman, whose district includes the medical center. He said his aides estimate that installing the sprinklers alone will cost about $35 million.

“We’ll have to figure out a plan how to pay for it,” Edelman said. “We can’t afford to lose the medical center. It’s the backbone of the health care system in Los Angeles County.”

The urgency of the medical center’s problem comes at a time when the supervisors are grappling to remedy extensive patient care problems at King, another county-operated hospital, in Watts.

King was cited last month by state and federal health authorities for major breakdowns in the area of quality assurance, infection control, nursing, dietary services and administration.