Supervisors Delay Vote to Close Hospital

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Thursday delayed voting on whether to close High Desert Hospital and 14 county clinics until county health officials map out the potential impact on patients.

The county Department of Health Services, which faces a deficit of about $650 million, wanted the board to authorize it to close the health centers by July 1 as part of a proposed $100 million in budget cuts.

But the board, led by Supervisor Gloria Molina, criticized the health department for proposing to close the hospital and health centers without preparing a report that would address the fallout from the cuts.

“We keep on talking about these closures in terms of dollars and cents,” said Molina. “But service is the other part of it. What’s it going to cost us besides money? I want to know what happens to the patients. I want to know the service impacts.”

The board directed the health department to provide a contingency report on June 15, which will include estimates of waiting times at county health facilities in the event of closures; its impact on local community hospitals, and residents’ geographic access to health care facilities after closures.

Closing High Desert Hospital in Lancaster is expected to save the health department about $35 million. But the longer the facility remains open after July 1, the less money the county will save. By delaying its decision, the supervisors raised the possibility of having to make additional cuts to get to the $100 million mark.

In addition to High Desert Hospital, 14 clinics--including one each in Burbank and Canoga Park--and the skilled nursing facility at Rancho Los Amigos Hospital in Downey have been slated for elimination.

In all, about 1,800 jobs are at risk, including about 600 at High Desert.

On Tuesday, about 250 Antelope Valley residents showed up at the meeting to protest the possible closure of High Desert, citing the area’s isolation, the hospital’s services, and the dearth of private hospitals and physicians in the area willing to accept patients with Medi-Cal or without insurance.

Diane Manship, the discharge coordinator at High Desert, said the closure of the hospital would be catastrophic.

“I believe the impact is that the patient will get no care,” she said. “They are going to stay at home sick, until it’s an emergency. Patients are going to die. Some won’t make it to the emergency room.”

Mike Antonovich, who represents the area around High Desert, said the poor who depend on the hospital have few alternatives to health care because the nearest county facility is 55 miles away at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar.

“The Antelope Valley doesn’t have the ability to absorb the cuts like urban areas,” said Antonovich. “They don’t have the ability to drive within a reasonable time to another facility . . . and the private hospital up there doesn’t have the ability to serve everyone because of the size of the area.”

Mark Murray, whose mother has cancer, agreed.

“My mother’s only means of transportation to the hospital is the ambulance,” he said. “I have done research, and no doctor in the Antelope Valley will accept Medi-Cal for cancer patients. That means she’ll have to go to Olive View or L.A. County-USC. How are we going to get there? What are you going to do, put us on a helicopter?”

But Robert Gates, the county’s health services director, said the department’s proposal to close the hospital made sense.

“The logic was that it’s a relatively small hospital in our system,” Gates said, as many in the audience groaned. “Given the logic that no one wants to cut anything, it’s like choosing one of your children. We felt this was a facility we can do without.”

Walter Gray, the health department’s associate administrator, said that if High Desert is closed, its poorest patients may simply be stuck without adequate service.

“Our issue is that we have patients that no one wants,” he said. “High Desert Hospital is there in part because of that. The contingency, in the most cases, is that only the sickest will be seen because private hospitals don’t want the indigent. It’s about dollars and cents.”