Poison Center in O.C., 2 Others Face Closure

Three of California’s seven regional poison control centers, including one operated by UCI Medical Center, are facing closure over funding shortfalls resulting from the state’s budgetary woes and tight money in the health-care system.

Poison centers in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Orange counties report crippling and potentially fatal money problems that already have forced them to reduce the number of phone lines, cut educational services and divert professional staff to fund raising. The Los Angeles center could close as early as the end of the year, officials said.

Two other centers--in Santa Clara and Fresno counties--also say that they are under financial pressure and have cut staff and services.

Collectively, the California poison centers--which operate 24-hour emergency telephone lines--give treatment advice for 250,000 victims of accidental poisoning a year, most of them under the age of 7. About 70% require no further medical attention, experts say, saving the health-care system costly and unnecessary emergency room visits.

Nationally, the financial picture is also bleak--the worst since the network of about 100 regional poison centers formed in the early 1970s.

“We are doing terribly,” said Dr. Toby Litovitz, president of the American Assn. of Poison Control Centers. “There is virtually no poison center in the United States that is adequately funded right now.”

In California, the state Emergency Services Authority provides about 20% of the money needed to run the regional poison centers. This year, the centers shared in a 4% funding cut that resulted from a severe state revenue shortfall.

The centers get the rest of their operating funds from private sources and, in some cases, local government. For all seven regional centers, a disproportionate funding burden has fallen on the hospital, agency or county where the center is based, officials say.

The Los Angeles County Medical Assn. must raise $800,000 a year to meet the $1.2-million budget of the poison control center it operates for Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. Most of the donations have traditionally come from hospitals and medical professionals, but this year these have provided only a third of what is needed, according to Collette E. Wright, a medical association vice president. To save money last spring, the center cut the number of incoming public phone lines from six to four.

The medical association was to launch a public appeal today. Without broad-based community support and immediate donations, the center will be forced to close at the end of the year, Wright said.

In Orange County, the main funding source is the UCIMedical Center, which operates the center serving Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside, Inyo and Mono counties. None of these counties contribute, nor do other hospitals in the region, according to Laurie Bunnel, the medical center’s associate director.

But UCI Medical Center is increasingly hard-pressed by the cost of treating Orange County’s poor and uninsured patients. Last spring, it nearly eliminated the poison center because of budgetary shortfalls. The same scenario next spring could lead to the center’s closure July 1 if other funding sources aren’t found, Bunnel said.

“We need some help,” she said. “Why should UCI be paying entirely for this program when it benefits five counties, people and parents in all of these communities, physicians, health plans, hospitals and county 911 systems?”

Recently, center staffers formed a plan to ask the 100 hospitals in their region to become “members” for $10,000 a year, receiving a newsletter, brochures and faxed information about poison treatments.

Will the hospitals join? Russ Inglish, vice president of the Hospital Council of Southern California, was doubtful. The poison control center is needed, he said. “But we’ve reached the point where a number of hospitals in Orange County cannot even support their own operation.”

The UCI center’s poisoning experts field 43,000 calls a year, looking up ingredients in a computer data bank called Poisindex and determining the appropriate treatment.

On Tuesday they counseled, among others, the anxious mother of a 2-year-old who had pried the cap off an aspirin bottle and a worried Corona del Mar man who had inhaled fumes from a powerful paint stripper.

Neither were serious incidents, but Kathy Karlheim, the center’s assistant director, said she worries that without the center, some parents might not bring their children to a hospital quickly enough to avoid permanent injury or death.

San Francisco’s poison control center, which serves 10 northern counties, also is teetering financially due to tight money at San Francisco General Hospital, which has provided 50% of the center’s operating budget, said Thomas E. Kearney, the center’s administrator.

The haphazard system of funding poison centers in California is mirrored in most other states. About half the states don’t provide money, nor is there any federal source of funding, according to Litovitz, president of the national association of centers and medical director of the Georgetown Hospital National Capital Center in Washington.

Litovitz and other poison center officials concede that they have neglected to educate the public on the value of the service in order to develop broad-based funding support. They are being driven by crisis to appeal to communities that have come to take the existence of poisoning hot lines for granted.

Litovitz said her group is gearing up to lobby Congress for federal funding.

Without the services that poison centers provide, health-care costs related to poisoning would be at least four times higher, she said. The only recourse for most poisoning victims would be hospital emergency rooms or rescue squads dispatched by 911 emergency operators, given the requirement for quick action.

Times staff writer Lanie Jones contributed to this story.