New Medical Network OKd for East Valley : Health Care: Instead of building a proposed hospital, the county will expand existing clinics and contract for other services.

The proposed $315-million East San Gabriel Valley hospital is, finally, a dead issue, at least for now.

In its place, Los Angeles County Supervisors on Tuesday approved a proposed network of existing private hospitals and doctors in combination with expanded public health clinics in the East San Gabriel Valley.

The plan would involve expansion, at a total cost of $44 million, of the county-run El Monte Comprehensive Health Center and the Pomona Health Center.

“We’re taking a huge debt off the taxpayers, for now, because we’ve created this alternative,” Supervisor Gloria Molina said of the approved plan. “It might even become a model as to how to meet health care for many of our residents.”

Molina said the network also might allow the county to reinstate a trauma care system in the East San Gabriel Valley, which has lacked such care for the last three years. Over the years, area hospitals cut back the trauma network because it was too costly.

The public-private network plan would provide health services from Monrovia east to Pomona and south to Whittier. Residents in those areas would have the full range of services available at County-USC Medical Center without having to travel to East Los Angeles.

The network was proposed after county officials realized recession-weary voters probably would not approve bonds for the larger project. The network will also save an estimated $57.2 million in yearly operating costs.

But the smaller project has other merits, county health officials said.

The private-public network would be modeled after a similar program successfully used in Ventura County for the last three years. Physician associations under contract to run that county’s health clinics improved health care there and converted the money-losing system into one that pays for itself, said Toni Saenz Yaffe, director of contracting for the Los Angeles County Health Services Department.

If successful in the East San Gabriel Valley, the new network could become the model for future programs countywide, Saenz Yaffe added.

The county health department has only one similar program operating, in which about 30 hospitals are under contract to deliver babies for women unable to use County-USC Medical Center, Saenz Yaffe said.

In approving the network, the board also agreed to spend $60,000 to hire consultants to begin planning for expansion at the two health centers.

The 9-year-old El Monte center on Ramona Boulevard would add outpatient clinic care for adults and children, plus emergency services for minor injuries.

The clinic provides more extensive services than most county health clinics with immunizations, prenatal health care, minor surgeries, gynecological care, and well-baby, tuberculosis and sexually transmitted disease clinics.

The two-story building of 86,000 square feet probably would be expanded by construction of an adjacent, 61,000-square-foot structure in the parking lot, Saenz Yaffe said.

The smaller and older Pomona building of 16,000 square feet on South Park Avenue would be expanded by 57,000 square feet. Prenatal, adolescent and women’s health care services, dental services and minor emergency aid would be added to the center’s existing immunization service, and well-baby, tuberculosis and sexually transmitted disease clinics.

Patients with life-threatening emergencies and those needing hospitalization would be treated in any of 21 hospitals in the region that would be under county contracts. The county likely will hire private doctors to staff the expanded clinics rather than county doctors in order to ensure that hospitalized patients would be treated by the same doctor who saw them in the clinic, Saenz Yaffe said.

Detailed plans for the network will be presented to the Board of Supervisors in April, but the entire system will not be in place for another five to six years because construction at both health center sites will take more than four years, Saenz Yaffe said.

On Tuesday, the board also canceled a contract with architects hired to draw building plans for the proposed new hospital, which was to have been located on a site near the San Gabriel River Freeway (605) in the City of Industry.

County officials spent more than $2 million and took more than two years to find a site for a hospital to serve the region as part of an overall $2.2-billion improvement plan for county health services. That plan included reconstruction of County-USC Medical Center and a new hospital in the Antelope Valley, projects that are going forward.

After the Board of Supervisors scaled back the plan to $1.8 billion on Oct. 20, Molina asked for assurances that an alternative public-private system would work.

On Tuesday, Molina said she was satisfied with the proposed alternative but suggested that the county seek changes in state hospital-funding laws. Under present law, state funds can be used for constructing hospitals but not for more cost-effective outpatient clinics, Molina said.

The proposal for the East San Gabriel Valley hospital will be shelved until a need arises for it or the county finds itself in better financial health, county officials said.

Also on the shelf is Los Angeles businessman Syd Barton’s proposal to build the hospital on land he owns with partners in South El Monte. In a last-minute pitch to the supervisors on Monday, Barton and The Koll Development Co. sent letters proposing a new deal: Koll would build the structure and the county would lease it.

But county officials said that proposal would be more expensive than the public-private network now going forward. In addition, Barton’s land lies in a flood plain, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opposes using it as a hospital site. The board did not even discuss the proposal Tuesday.