Workers’ Final Checks Withheld After Hospital Suddenly Shuts Down

The abrupt closing of a Torrance psychiatric hospital has angered employees who complain that they have been stranded without jobs or paychecks and that patients’ treatment was disrupted.

Employees report that both they and their patients were told of the impending shutdown of Suncrest Hospital of South Bay less than two days before it closed its doors Oct. 31.

Although managers promised that final paychecks would be issued last Friday, workers say, they instead received letters announcing that no paychecks would be forthcoming soon.

More than 50 former workers protested Friday morning outside the locked doors of the blue-and-white Suncrest building at 4025 W. 226th St., where the hospital’s sign was shrouded in blue plastic.

“Pay us our $$,” read a sign toted by one ex-employee.

A spokesman for Suncrest responded that the hospital had intended to issue the final paychecks but has been barred from doing so by a creditors’ petition filed in bankruptcy court.

Former employees bitterly rejected that explanation, saying they are owed two weeks’ pay and accrued personal days. Many of them traveled from Torrance to Long Beach after their protest Friday to lodge complaints against Suncrest with the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement of the state Department of Industrial Relations.

“People have been coming in all day long and filing. We’ve had a lobby full of people,” said Abigael Calva, senior deputy labor commissioner at the Long Beach office, which will investigate the complaints.

Health officials called the abrupt closing unusual for a psychiatric hospital.

In a press statement late Friday afternoon, Suncrest officials said the closing “was necessitated because of extremely slow payments from patient insurers that tied up the hospital’s cash flow, a declining patient census and increasing operating costs.”

They said all patients were transferred or discharged “under the supervision of their treating physicians.”

Some ex-employees expressed concern about the effects on the estimated 30 to 35 patients present at the 96-bed hospital when they were informed of the shutdown Oct. 29. Their problems ranged from alcohol dependency and sexual trauma, such as molestation or incest, to eating disorders and general depression, the employees said.

“We were supposed to be providing them with stability,” said Gary Bilotti, who had been director of education. But when patients were told that the hospital was about to close, Bilotti said, “there were a lot of them in fear, suffering anxiety and panic attacks.”

Some patients sobbed, yelled or screamed, employees said. Some threw food in the cafeteria and tossed pieces of patio furniture into the pool, Bilotti said, calling the behavior understandable “given the position those people were in.”

Other employees criticized the hospital for not staying open a few weeks longer to ensure a stable transition, saying that a number of the patients were there on a short-term basis.

Some patients said “that they would have no place to go,” said Mary Ann Loftus, a nursing care supervisor, who said that staff members worked hard after the news broke to soften the blow for the patients.

“There was a team of very dedicated, involved staff,” Loftus said.

The county Department of Mental Health’s patient-rights office learned of the impending closing when a patient called the morning of Oct. 30.

The patient reported that “it was very upsetting and about half the patients were up all night,” said Barbara Demming Lurie, who heads the office and has since heard from two other patients.

“Often psychiatric patients are already in an agitated or confused state. Having this additional disruption certainly may exacerbate their condition,” she said. “They had to go through rather a fearful period.”

The county Department of Health Services’ health facilities division dispatched investigators to Suncrest “to see that there was an orderly transfer,” said Augusta Bohannon, a supervisor for acute services for the division. All patients had left by late morning Oct. 31, she said.

The hospital’s license was issued to South Bay Medical Associates, which has asked that the license be suspended for 12 months, Bohannon said.

The hospital was one of 43 acute psychiatric hospitals in a six-county area that includes Los Angeles, according to figures from the Hospital Council of Southern California.

William Toten, a consultant for Suncrest management, said it “moved responsibly” and worked with attending physicians to relocate or discharge the patients.

“No patient was turned onto the street,” he said.

The hospital was forced to close because insurance companies “didn’t pay the hospital what was owed them,” Toten said Friday. He blamed a court petition filed by three creditors for delaying payment to the employees.

“It’s up to a black-robed gentleman and the bankruptcy process” when employees will be paid, said Toten, who described himself as a consultant working with management to devise a plan for paying creditors promptly.

The three creditors filed a petition requesting that the court place the hospital under Chapter 7 involuntary bankruptcy, said their attorney, Scott C. Clarkson. The two doctors and one clinical psychologist claim they are owed more than $100,000 in back fees, he said.

Clarkson vehemently rejected Toten’s claim that the petition delayed the paychecks. In a Thursday letter to Suncrest official Dr. Stanley R. Mayberg, Clarkson called on him to “immediately contact your employees and re-advise them that you may have other reasons not to pay them, but the filing of the . . . petition is not one of them.”