3 Hospitals Allowed to Limit Patients From Paramedics : Medicine: The pact aims to stop more South Bay facilities from closing their doors to public ambulances.

In a move aimed at preventing more South Bay hospitals from closing their doors to patients transported by paramedics, Los Angeles County health officials have agreed to allow three local hospitals, on a trial basis, to accept public ambulance patients only from their immediate areas.

The agreement will go into effect May 15 at Memorial Hospital of Gardena, Robert F. Kennedy Medical Center in Hawthorne and Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital in Inglewood. The arrangement could later be amended or canceled if it is found to be impractical, an official with the county’s Department of Health Services said this week.

“It is a trial program, and if it doesn’t work, we’ll stop and go back to the drawing board,” said Barbara Pavey, who supervises paramedic care for the department.

In recent months, all three facilities have said that increasing numbers of patients from outside their areas are overburdening emergency care operations.

Gardena and Freeman, in particular, have said a large number of their emergency patients come from nearby areas served by county-operated Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles. The center is frequently overcrowded, and overflow patients are taken to the two hospitals.

Under the agreement, neither King nor Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance will be allowed to divert paramedic patients from their areas to the three South Bay hospitals.

Figures on how many patients transported by paramedics are treated by the three local hospitals were not immediately available. A Freeman official said that facility treats about 950 such patients each month, but she was unable to say how many of them came from Inglewood and nearby areas.

County health officials have been especially concerned about paramedic service in the South Bay since last spring, when Centinela Hospital Medical Center in Inglewood stopped taking patients transported by paramedics, except obstetric cases. The hospital cited huge financial losses from non-paying emergency cases for its decision.

Then, about five months ago, Memorial Hospital of Gardena, saying it also could not afford to continue to take such cases, filed for permission with state officials to shut its doors to paramedics. The hospital later offered to retain paramedic services if it were allowed to take only Gardena residents.

The county balked at Gardena’s request, but it began talks with the three hospitals to establish areas from which each would draw patients transported by paramedics.

County health officials were worried that all the facilities might eventually close their doors to such patients unless a deal could be struck, Pavey said.

“If they leave, (the) impact on county hospitals would be inestimable, just enormous,” she said.

George Rooth, administrator at Memorial Hospital of Gardena, said he was pleased with the agreement.

The agreement calls for Memorial essentially to treat only those patients picked up by paramedics within Gardena’s city limits. Kennedy will receive patients from Hawthorne, El Segundo, Lawndale and a portion of Lennox.

Freeman will accept patients from Inglewood and areas stretching to Western Avenue on the east, Los Angeles International Airport on the west, Slauson Avenue on the north and Imperial Highway on the south.