Supervisors Scale Back Hospital Expansion Plans

Ambitious plans to replace aging County-USC Medical Center and build two additional outlying medical centers were scaled back Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors.

The action came amid concerns that voters struggling under the recession would vote down the bond issue needed to finance the project.

The revised plans reduce the estimated $2.2-billion budget to $1.8 billion, shave the total size of hospital facilities by 600,000 square feet and delete nearly 400 beds.

A proposal to build a 350-bed hospital for the San Gabriel Valley, originally slated to be deleted, was left in the project--but only until December--while Department of Health Services officials re-examine that part of the plan.

The cutbacks will eliminate the need for voter-approved bonds, said the county’s chief administrative officer, Richard B. Dixon. Instead, the county will pay for the project with state financing and savings anticipated from a new and more efficient County-USC Medical Center, he said.

Dixon urged the supervisors to approve the reconfiguration now to allow architects to continue their work and avoid missing a June, 1994, state funding deadline. He promised to review the financial feasibility of the entire project.

“As it’s presented before you today, it’s (financing) not entirely covered, particularly in the early years,” Dixon told a skeptical board. “But if you approve this, we are going to have the county auditor hire an independent consultant to bring (the project) into a position where it would be cost neutral. I believe it can be brought into that.”

But even as they voted unanimously for the scaled-down project, some supervisors expressed displeasure.

“Somehow we’re being rushed into it each time this (project) comes here,” Supervisor Ed Edelman said.

Operations at the 1,450-bed main county hospital in East Los Angeles have been handicapped by outdated structures. In October, 1990, the board approved revamping and rebuilding the health department’s system of hospitals and medical centers.

The original improvement plan was to spend $2.2 billion from general obligation bonds to build 950 beds at a new County-USC facility on the present grounds, 350 beds in the proposed San Gabriel Valley hospital, 230 beds for a new Antelope Valley hospital and 100 additional beds at Olive View Medical Center in Sylmar and Harbor/UCLA Medical Center in Torrance.

But with the recession and concern that voters would not approve the funding, health officials in April began making revisions. Central to the alterations was a newfound interest by local private hospitals to accept county patients.