Hospital Plans Bankruptcy Filing : Health care: Spokesman says Mission Community will file for protection today but that no layoffs or service cuts are expected.

Mission Community Hospital will file for protection under the federal bankruptcy laws today but service will be unaffected, a hospital spokesman said Thursday, adding that the hospital’s attorneys are investigating the company that managed the 159-bed facility until four months ago.

No layoffs or reductions in service are planned for the nonprofit hospital, which has facilities in both the city of San Fernando and Panorama City and serves a largely lower-income or indigent population, spokesman Martin M. Cooper said.

“To the outside world, there will be no change,” Cooper said.

He attributed the bankruptcy filing to a delay in receiving payments from state and federal health-care programs.

The hospital’s assets are about $22 million, with liabilities of about $26 million, according to Cooper.

Cooper also said that Intercare, the management company that had run the hospital from 1987 until July, was dismissed in July following a review of its performance conducted by the hospital’s board of directors. The review’s preliminary findings were that Intercare’s management was “unsatisfactory,” Cooper said, refusing to discuss the specifics of the investigation.

The head of Intercare was not available for comment.

The Chapter 11 filing in U. S. Bankruptcy Court is the latest financial problem for an institution with a history of living on the fiscal edge.

In 1976, the city of San Fernando issued $2.6 million in bonds, using the proceeds to keep the financially ailing hospital from closing. City Councilman Raul Godinez said Thursday that he considers the hospital’s current financial condition a possible liability to the city because of an agreement linked to the bond deal.

When the city agreed to issue the bonds, it received a “reversionary right” to the hospital property--meaning that the city could take title to the property after the bonds are paid off.

As of last December, the hospital owners still owed about $2 million on the bonds.

“The threat to the city is that we may now be forced to consider bailing the hospital owners out in order to preserve our right to the property,” Godinez said. “I’m very concerned about what’s going on. Protecting the city’s reversionary interest is of the utmost importance.”

Cooper and San Fernando officials said the city and hospital are beginning preliminary financial discussions related to the Chapter 11 filing. City officials said the City Council will discuss the matter at its meeting on Monday.

In the past, San Fernando City Council members have expressed concern that several members of the hospital’s board of directors had outside business contracts with Intercare, but hospital officials have said there was no conflict of interest in those arrangements.

Mission Community Hospital was created by joining San Fernando and Panorama community hospitals in 1992. Since then, the San Fernando campus of the hospital has been used largely as a psychiatric treatment center.