134 Laid Off at Medical Center to Help Contain Costs : Medicine: New treatments mean fewer hospital days for the rich, administrators say; hard times mean more low-paying patients.

Long Beach Memorial Medical Center laid off 134 employees last week in the hospital’s most recent effort to streamline operations and reduce expenses, an official said.

Wednesday was the final workday for the 134 full-time and part-time employees, including nurses and clerical workers. The hospital also trimmed its administrative staff by 35 employees Aug. 28, hospital spokesman Ron Yukelson said Thursday.

Through attrition and layoffs, the hospital has trimmed its work force from about 4,500 to 4,000 workers in the last year, Yukelson said.

Long Beach Memorial began making spending cuts last year, when it closed its mental health center. It shut down its drug and alcohol treatment center in May.

The hospital is trying to reduce costs to compensate for trends that are hurting hospitals throughout the region, Yukelson said.

In recent months, the number of patients admitted has decreased, he said. In addition, medical advances are allowing more people to be treated as outpatients, he added.

The recession is also responsible for some of the change.

More unemployment means that fewer people have health insurance, and factory closures have forced some of the hospital’s client population out of the area, hospital officials said.

Yukelson said that as more people lose their jobs, Long Beach Memorial has had to absorb the cost of treating more indigent patients. He added that Medi-Cal and Medicare payments cover only a fraction of the expense.

Long Beach Memorial and its corporate sister, Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills, lost more than $300 million on indigent care during the 1990-91 fiscal year, the latest year for which figures are available, Yukelson said.

The recent spending cuts should stave off price increases, he said, adding: “We’re going to do our best to hold the line on health care costs.”

Last week’s cuts mean that fewer registered nurses will be assigned to patients in some areas, Yukelson said.

He said the hospital plans to use registered nurses in teams with licensed vocational nurses and patient care assistants.

Several nurses interviewed by The Times said that they had not been significantly affected by the hospital’s cost-cutting measures but were anxious about the future.

“It’s day by day,” said one nurse, who did not want to be identified. “It’s going to take a while to see what all the impacts are.”