Senate Panel OKs New Quake Code Bill for Hospitals : Legislation: Hayden’s proposal sets deadline of 2008 to meet the modern standards. Lobbyists say it will financially cripple facilities.

Saying the foot-dragging has gone on long enough, a state Senate committee Wednesday passed a bill to speed up the timetable for California’s hospitals to comply with modern earthquake standards.

The bill, by state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), was drafted in response to recommendations from state structural engineers who studied damage to hospitals in the wake of the Northridge earthquake.

Presently, state law allows hospitals to wait until the year 2030 to retrofit, rebuild or shut down structures built before 1973 that fail to meet current Seismic Safety Act standards.

Hayden’s bill would quicken the pace by requiring hospitals to meet the codes by 2008--a schedule that industry lobbyists protested would lead to financial ruin for hospitals.

In a lively, sometimes testy, discussion among lobbyists and lawmakers, state Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles), chair of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, sharply reprimanded hospital lobbyists opposing the legislation.

To those who would delay, Watson said: “We can’t keep putting this off. We’re going to have to find a way to protect life sooner than that. I think since we had a devastating earthquake last year, hospitals should want to really speed up.”

The bill, approved by a 5 to 1 vote, would also require hospitals to take less sweeping, specific steps to increase seismic safety within three years. Those include ensuring that at least one elevator operates properly after a temblor, that life support systems are bolted down, and that emergency generators, batteries and fuel tanks are on hand.

To support his argument for the bill, Hayden called the committee’s attention to an August, 1994, draft report on the affects of the Northridge quake on hospitals, prepared by the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development.

Among the report’s findings was a statement that “The present standards for the structural design, construction and anchoring of (hospital equipment) . . . are not sufficient to prevent any and all damage during an earthquake.”

It continued with a recommendation that the “Legislature must re-evaluate the code procedures and policies in order to mitigate the effects of future earthquakes to our health care facilities.”

Today’s standoff stems from legislation passed after the deadly 1971 Sylmar earthquake, when lawmakers reacted to the collapse of Olive View Hospital with what they said was a tough, new hospital safety act. It turned out, however, that that law applied only to new hospitals and exempted any health care facility constructed before 1973.

Laws adopted since then have set out to require eventual compliance with current codes but some, including a bill signed into law last year, were watered down as a result of protests from the hospital lobby.

Hayden’s legislation comes five years after a major statewide survey of hospitals disclosed that two-thirds of California’s hospital buildings did not meet current building codes.

Hospitals voluntarily took part in the survey for the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development on the condition they not be identified. The 1990 survey is the most recent study available, according to the state’s Seismic Safety Commission.

Roger Richter of the California Assn. of Hospital and Health Systems warned Wednesday that Hayden’s bill would cost the industry $20 billion.

That, he said, is an insurmountable sum that would “put more hospitals out of business than if there were a major earthquake.”

Richter downplayed the importance of the state engineers’ report as the work of “a few staff” at the agency in charge of enforcing hospital earthquake safety standards.

But Hayden replied that it was compiled by the state’s best technical advisers on the issue. He criticized the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development for not distributing it publicly.

“This report is being buried because it poses too bold a conclusion,” Hayden said. “It calls for speeding up everything.”

In the event hospitals are not in compliance with current codes, Hayden’s bill requires them to publicly notify patients.

“From a doctor’s point of view, there’s an oath they take that requires decency and candor,” Hayden said. “I would think that goes for a health care institution as well.”

Hospital representatives said they will oppose this requirement because they fear it will scare away patients at a time when health care facilities are struggling financially.

Hayden agreed to help identify a source of funding for the retrofitting, possibly through a bond measure, before the bill goes before the Senate Appropriations Committee, its next stop in the Legislature.