Lack of Funding Endangers Valley’s Only AIDS Hospice : Health: The county suspended its contract in August for operation of the Van Nuys facility when new state regulations took effect.

The San Fernando Valley’s only hospice for dying AIDS patients--along with a similar facility in Long Beach--will be forced to close as early as next week if county officials do not release funds budgeted for the facilities, hospice operators say.

Los Angeles County suspended its contract with Homestead Hospice and Shelter to operate the five-bed Pioneer Home in Van Nuys and the 11-bed Padua House in Long Beach last August when new licensing regulations imposed by the state became effective.

A third Homestead-operated hospice, the five-bed Wayland Flowers House in Hollywood, closed last May because its county contract was not renewed, said Mark Rennebohm, Homestead’s executive director.

He said that 23 nursing assistants, cooks and housekeepers at the hospices, who are paid $14,000 biweekly, have agreed to keep working without pay while Homestead petitions the county to reinstate its suspended contracts. Rennebohm said he was not able to meet this week’s payroll.

“We are literally day-to-day at this point,” said Rennebohm, who will take his case to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday. “At this point, the quality of care has not been compromised, but we’ll have to close if . . . the money is not forthcoming.”

Rennebohm said Homestead would receive about $250,000 if the contract is reinstated.

Robert Frangenberg, director of the county Health Department’s AIDS programs, said county attorneys ruled that the Homestead hospices became ineligible for funding Aug. 1 because they had not met state requirements for an operating license. Other counties, however, interpret state law differently and allow facilities not meeting state requirements to receive public funds.

“We don’t want to see them close,” Frangenberg said. “They have been providing much-needed services for a long time and they do a good job.”

Rennebohm said the facilities--all converted private homes--failed to meet state licensing requirements that Rennebohm said are too strict. He said the guidelines would require the hospices to double the number of their employees and make expensive structural changes.

“The requirements were more appropriate for larger, more institutional-type operations such as those in hospitals,” he said.

Only one of the smaller, privately operated hospices in the county--a 22-bed facility in Los Angeles--has met state licensing requirements, officials said. A bill by Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Los Angeles) that would revise the regulations for smaller facilities is pending in the state Legislature.

Rennebohm said that since the county stopped payments, the two Homestead hospices have provided $150,000 worth of care to patients assigned to them by the county.

“We got by on donations and fund-raisers,” Rennebohm said. “But we’ve reached the point where we can no longer do it. We’ve bottomed out.”

If the hospices close, he said, some patients will “have to be turned out on the streets.” Others will be placed in county hospitals, where care costs about $700 a day, compared to the $130 a day the county was paying Homestead.

Only about 10% of the patients, Rennebohm said, can afford to pay for the services themselves.

The Van Nuys hospice has cared for more than 60 AIDS patients, many of whom have died, since it opened in November, 1988, he said.

The Van Nuys and Long Beach hospices, together with the third one Homestead operated in Hollywood, represented about 20% of the 100 beds available to dying AIDS victims in Los Angeles County.

“I have 25 men waiting for one bed in Long Beach,” said Lee Rubio, resident manager of Padua House. “We must find a way to stay open.”

Rennebohm said he hopes to reopen the Hollywood hospice if county funding is restored.