At Ailing Hospital, Only Bankruptcy Waits to Check In

The halls are silent. The patients are puzzled. The nurses are bored.

That is what happens when a 103-bed hospital has only three patients--and two are about to be discharged.

There are few doctors around. The beds are immaculately made up in dark, empty rooms. The four nurses on duty Thursday night chat in whispers; a normal conversation echoes in the empty corridors.

Such eerie scenes are the norm these days at Marina Hills Hospital--a facility on the verge of collapse. On Tuesday, hospital officials announced plans to file for bankruptcy protection but, in the meantime, they say they are determined to keep the facility open and the staff on call, even if there is only one patient left in the hospital.

And for much of last week, there was only one patient. On Friday, when two women in labor entered the Ladera Heights facility, the patient census tripled to three. In contrast, before hospital administrator Greg DeFelice announced last week that the hospital could not meet the January payroll, Marina Hills, primarily an obstetrics hospital, was filled to capacity.

“It’s been so strange,” said nurse Peggy MacKenzie, one of dozens of employees who have chosen to remain working at the community hospital. “When you arrive in the parking lot in the morning, it’s so empty, it’s like you’re in the Australian outback.”

At a hastily called meeting this week, administrator DeFelice told hospital employees that they will be paid only if they keep working. He said those still owed back pay will have to wait until the bankruptcy petition has been approved. Employees now are being paid the day after they work a shift at the hospital; most say they will continue to work as long as the checks are good.

Marina Hills employees know little about the future status of the facility. They say DeFelice has not revealed his plans even to several key hospital administrators. Nervous shareholders held a private meeting Thursday night to try to figure out their next step. No one knows what they decided.

“There’s no word trickling in, none at all,” said Valerie Uswale, a nurse who has worked at the hospital under a variety of owners for 11 years. “They’re acting as if the lack of patients hasn’t hurt them. . . . All we know is that there is an awful lot they’re not telling us.”

The hospital had recently signed a obstetrics contract with Los Angeles County to deliver some babies, but the county and dozens of private physicians pulled their patients out and transferred them to other hospitals after the facility’s shaky financial status became known.

Uswale said the result has been highly personalized nursing care for the handful of women who have decided to have their babies at the facility anyway.

“The patients are kind of bewildered as to what’s going on, but they’re getting terrific care because we don’t have anything else to do,” she said. “It’s kind of sad though. The place is so empty. I’ve never seen it like this.”

DeFelice has hired a consulting group to help Marina Hills in its Chapter 11 action, which would allow the hospital to continue operating with protection from creditor demands while it works out a reorganization plan.

However, officials said a lawsuit filed by Maxicare Health Plans Inc. against Marina Hills could complicate the bankruptcy proceedings. Maxicare, which sold the hospital operations to Ladera Heights Community Hospital Inc., a group headed by attorney Lloyd S. Ingber, is suing for approximately $100,000 in premiums owed for health care coverage Maxicare provided to hospital employees.

Another complication in the bankruptcy action, according to hospital sources, may be DeFelice’s role at the Pacific Alliance Medical Center, formerly French Hospital, which filed for bankruptcy last year. DeFelice currently has a management contract at Pacific Alliance and he and Ingber are believed to be investors in the Chinatown medical facility.

Neither Ingber nor DeFelice could be reached for comment.

Uswale said it is only a matter of time before she and the other nurses take jobs elsewhere. Some of them, who have strong ties to the hospital, have been reluctant to leave.

“Deep down, I want to believe it’s not going to close, and that it will return to the way that it was,” Uswale said. “But I know that’s not going to happen. Maybe they’ll carry on for three or four more months, but then it will all be over.”