Poison Center’s Calls to Go to L.A. County Facility : Health: The consolidation is aimed at saving money. The Orange facility, which serves a five-county area, is unable to stay open due to lack of funding.

Thwarted in fund raising efforts to keep open its regional poison center, UCI Medical Center announced Thursday that starting in August all calls will be transferred to a center in Los Angeles County.

The move comes as part of a state experiment to see if consolidating poison centers will save money, said Martin Honigs, spokesman for the Los Angeles County Regional Drug and Poison Information Center.

The center in Los Angeles has agreed to take the 51,000 calls a year that UCI Medical Center has been fielding from a five-county region.

Honigs said the State Emergency Medical Services Authority has given the Los Angeles-based center $670,000 to handle the extra workload through June, 1994.

After that, Honigs said, he expects the state will fund only a tiny fraction of the extra cost and the Los Angeles center will have to rely on more extensive fund-raising activities.

“The goal was to continue to provide service. But there is still no long-term stability for the funding of poison centers,” said Beth Groves, a field representative for state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach). The senator headed a task force that tried to raise community support to save the poison center in Orange.

Under budgetary pressure, UCI Medical Center said it can no longer fund the vast majority of the $800,000 annual cost of operating its own poison center. The center opened in 1957 as a service to physicians and other health-care professionals.

In 1973, the center was expanded into a 24-hour community resource, offering information to the public, hospitals, schools, and police and fire departments.

Besides Orange County, the center has served Riverside, San Bernardino, Mono and Inyo counties.

Twice last year the university said the poison center would close, but each time there was a reprieve when extra funds were found. Coming to the rescue was the George Hoag Family Foundation, which contributed $250,000.

But UCI Medical Center spokeswoman Dorothy Jean said there was little grass-roots response to save the center. An exception was a campaign by students at De Portola Elementary School in Mission Viejo, who raised $365.

“I just feel it (has been) such a wonderful resource and it was taken for granted,” said Marilyn Ashwell, health services specialist for the Saddleback Valley Unified School District. “It was like you couldn’t believe something you use that much could be closed.”

The public can still get information about poison by calling (800) 544-4404.