COUNTY HOPES TO LURE HOSPITALS BACK TO TRAUMA CARE SYSTEM : HEALTH: PROP. 99 TOBACCO TAX FUNDS WILL BE OFFERED TO OFFSET HOSPITAL LOSSES. BUT MANY OFFICIALS BELIEVE THE MOVE IS TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE.

In an attempt to revive Los Angeles County’s critically injured trauma system, officials said Friday that--with the help of Proposition 99 tobacco tax funds--they are trying to lure back four of the 10 private hospitals that dropped out of the sprawling trauma network.

But skeptical hospital officials said the estimated $42 million in Proposition 99 funds the county expects to receive for its entire trauma network this year probably will not be enough to persuade the four medical centers--Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital in Inglewood, Queen of the Valley Hospital in West Covina and Whittier Presbyterian Hospital and St. Joseph Hospital in Burbank--to return to the system.

“The money is too little, too late,” said David Langness, a spokesman for the Hospital Council of Southern California. “I doubt seriously that it will bring any of the hospitals that dropped out back in. And I don’t think it will even keep some of the hospitals now in from dropping out.”

Virginia Price-Hastings, chief of the county’s hospital trauma program, told a conference of hospital administrators and physicians in Long Beach that the county must shore up a trauma system that is fighting for its life.

Price-Hastings said that although the funding formula hasn’t been completed, the county has agreed to split the Proposition 99 funds equally among the 13 hospitals still in the trauma network plus any of the four that would rejoin, “so we don’t end up punishing the hospitals that agreed to stay in” the trauma system.

That decision, however, means that they may not be able to entice private hospitals to rejoin the trauma system, according to health officials. Even if the hospitals received between $2 million to $3 million each, “it probably wouldn’t be enough to sign up,” said a Daniel Freeman hospital official who asked not to be identified.

Robert Gates, chief of the county Department of Health Services, said Friday: “Frankly, I hope we can get two or three of them back,” but he acknowledged that it was unlikely that the county could persuade all four to return. Gates said that Daniel Freeman was considered the highest priority because its departure left a gaping hole on the west end of the trauma network, and because it is the closest hospital to Los Angeles International Airport, a potential disaster site.

However, Price-Hastings said that the Inglewood hospital’s participation in the county trauma network was the least likely because of heavy financial losses suffered by the medical facility’s trauma center.

All four hospitals were chosen to fill “geographical holes” in the county’s trauma network so that no patients will be more than 20 minutes from any trauma center.

Daniel Fahey, chief operating officer of St. Joseph Hospital, said his facility was forced to drop out this year after losing nearly $2 million annually. “The question came down to whether we could continue to be a financially viable institution,” he said, adding that their decision to rejoin would be largely dependent on the amount of Proposition 99 funding available.

Friday’s conference at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, which attracted more than 100 trauma physicians and administrators from Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties, was the first large-scale attempt to find a solution to the trauma network problem.

In 1983, when the system was first set up, private hospitals battled and even sued to be included in the prestigious trauma network, regarded as the crown jewel of the county’s emergency services program.

But instead of bringing a large amount of money into the hospitals, soaring insurance health care costs and new government controls resulted in huge financial losses at many of the private hospitals, and they began dropping out of the network within six months.

In August, the 10th trauma center of the original 23 dropped out and several more hospitals have threatened to bail out. The reduction in the size of the network has severely overtaxed the trauma centers at three county-run hospitals--Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, UCLA-Harbor Medical Center and County-USC Medical Center--which have been forced to close their doors to hundreds of trauma patients.

County officials and hospital administrators said the only hope for the system is more funding--but much more than the available tobacco tax funds.