Hospital Dedicated Amid Debate

Amid debate over its mission, the long-awaited USC University Hospital was dedicated Thursday at a ceremony that hailed the birth of the $157-million facility as the promising progeny of an unusual marriage between private enterprise and academia.

The new teaching hospital, built and operated by National Medical Enterprises Inc., will be staffed by the faculty of the USC Medical School, who until now devoted themselves primarily to teaching, research and caring for the poor at nearby County-USC Medical Center on the Eastside.

The highly specialized facility, full of state-of-the-art equipment, is expected to provide opportunities for doctors to supplement their salaries and generate money for the medical school by treating profitable, privately insured patients from all over Southern California and even the world.

But the enterprise, two decades in the planning, has touched off considerable debate over the possible effects on medical care for the poor at County-USC.

About 200 USC faculty members have signed a letter to USC President Steven Sample protesting a diversion of resources from existing medical school programs and personnel at County-USC to meet the needs of the new hospital. And NME is being criticized for designing the hospital in a way that targets only patients with private health insurance, while closing a community hospital in Long Beach this month that has long served predominantly poor and medically uninsured people.

Dr. Sol Bernstein, medical director at County-USC said that in the long run the new USC facility will produce a “win-win situation for everybody--for the county of Los Angeles, the university, and for patients. But nothing is achieved without a little bit of anxiety as well as a little bit of growing pains, especially in an era where funding is short and the economy is not rapidly expanding. People have a great deal of anxiety.”

Despite efforts to specialize in profit-making medical services such as neurosurgery, the hospital is far from a guaranteed success. NME’s John C. Bedrosian said he expects losses of about $15 million during the first year of operation. He hopes it will break even during the third year.

The medical school, which is responsible for staffing the new hospital, is borrowing millions of dollars to hire and provide office and laboratory space for 100 new faculty members during the next three years. Individual medical departments are also borrowing money to cover the start-up costs of launching their members into private practice at the new hospital.

The borrowing is occurring at a time when the medical school already faces a serious financial squeeze that is forcing all departments to accept budget cuts of 4% to 5%, according to medical school officials. In some cases, the cuts will mean reduced salaries for faculty and the inability to fill vacancies.

“We find extremely offensive the proposition that the current faculty and staff are being asked to take minimal pay increases or even pay cuts next year and to forgo replacement of vacant positions . . . to support recruitment of new faculty to practice at (the new hospital),” according to a letter sent by faculty members to USC President Sample.

At Sample’s request, University Provost Cornelius Pings said he met Monday with 10 faculty members to begin a discussion on the subject.

Dr. Gerald Whalen, professor of emergency medicine, said the protesting physicians are primarily concerned about ensuring quality care for patients at County-USC.

Eventually, it is hoped that profits from the new hospital will shore up medical teaching programs and improve indigent patient care at County-USC.

NME’s Bedrosian stressed that the giant health care corporation is a “company with a conscience . . . and a commitment to serving the underprivileged.”

Asked why the corporation is closing Dominguez Medical Center in Long Beach this month, he said that the hospital suffered net losses of $16 million during the last three years. “If you take beatings like that,” he said, “you find you can’t do other things.”

The decision to close Dominguez, he added, was “totally coincidental and irrelevant” to the opening of USC University Hospital.

The closure of the 250-bed community hospital that served predominantly poor and uninsured patients from Compton and other neighboring communities will mean that those patients will have to travel farther and wait longer for emergency care at other hospitals, according to local health care officials.