Hanging On for Dear Life : Van Nuys: Budget pressures may shut down the Mid Valley Comprehensive Health Center. Supporters call county penny-wise and pound-foolish.

The yellow signs taped to the smoked glass doors of the Mid Valley Comprehensive Health Center in Van Nuys on Monday related the facts, but left the story untold.

“Actions by the Governor and the State Legislature may result in the closure of this facility,” the signs read in English and Spanish. “Los Angeles County’s funding in the 1993-94 state budget is insufficient to meet vital community needs.”

Those are the facts. The county Board of Supervisors is mulling the closure of the Van Nuys center along with three others in the county to plug a $102-million hole in its health services budget.

But the signs fail to tell the stories of the hundreds of thousands of people who depend on the health centers for everything from testing for tuberculosis and sexually transmitted diseases to prenatal screening and immunizing their toddlers.

The stories are told by anxious mothers who wonder where else they can turn. Their choices are limited, because the county health system is the safety net that catches those with nowhere else to go--people without medical insurance who are too poor to seek care elsewhere.

“If this place closes, I can’t envision what will happen,” said nurse Janet Mahoney, who works at the Van Nuys health center.

“It’s going to be catastrophic,” nurse Diane Forkin said. “Honestly.”

Forkin, Mahoney and members of various community groups held a news conference outside the clinic Monday, calling on the supervisors to save the center from closure. The supervisors--who will decide next month which services will be spared and which cut--said they are sympathetic, but there is so little money available that something’s got to give.

“I’ve spoken about the foolhardy nature of closing comprehensive health centers when they keep people from getting so sick that they have to go to a hospital,” said Supervisor Ed Edelman, who represents most of the San Fernando Valley. “But the fact is, we have limited dollars because of the state budget.”

Earlier this month, California legislators approved plans to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars from local governments to the state’s treasury to balance its budget. That move has left cities and counties scrambling to make up the loss and facing Draconian cuts in services.

The politics of the situation are beyond Lupita Guerra, who came to the center Monday shortly after the protest. All the 21-year-old Van Nuys resident knows is that if the local health center closes, she has no idea where to take her 2-year-old son, Hansel, for care.

“I’m sad,” Guerra said Monday as she waited for Hansel to get his immunizations. “I don’t know where they are going to move us.”

More than likely, patients who need treatment would be forced to wait in the emergency room of Olive View Medical Center, the only county hospital in the Valley. But Olive View is so crowded now that the wait for service there can already take 15 to 24 hours.

The idea of closing the health centers bewilders doctors and community leaders, who say they are among the county’s most cost-effective programs. They head off potentially catastrophic health problems through testing, education and preventive care, supporters say.

“These kinds of health care decisions will cost all of us in the county more than they save,” said Lew Hollman of San Fernando Valley Neighborhood Legal Services, one of the groups trying to keep the health centers open.

Although the centers cater to the poorest of the county’s poor, said Edelman and others, their closure will be felt by members of all income brackets. “Everyone will feel it eventually,” Edelman said.

Edelman, Hollman and other supporters said that fewer tests for tuberculosis could mean more cases; fewer measles vaccinations could mean that more children die each year, and less prenatal care will probably mean more underweight babies--who will require hospitalization and more expensive care.

“We’re talking about short-term savings at a long-term social cost,” Hollman said.