Westlake Hospital to Be Sold

Less than a year after buying Westlake Medical Center, an international hospital conglomerate announced Wednesday it is ceasing all inpatient care at the 23-year-old hospital and selling the facility.

But officials at a Los Angeles-based cancer center that already leases part of the Westlake hospital immediately said they will buy the facility to expand their operations.

The fate of the 190 full-time employees at Westlake is still undecided, though both the seller--Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp.--and the buyer--Salick Health Care--said they hope to hire as many of the employees as possible.

Citing a drastic drop-off in patient numbers, Columbia’s chief executive officer for its two area hospitals, Westlake and Los Robles Regional Medical Center, said keeping the Westlake facility open was no longer economically feasible.

“We have 14 patients on average a day since we bought it, compared to 120 a day at Los Robles,” CEO Ronald Phelps said. “I think this hospital is running at about 11% of its capacity.”

Dr. Bernard Salick, chairman of Salick’s board and chief executive officer, declined to name the purchase price but said the sale probably will be final in 90 days. Columbia officials said Westlake will continue regular operations for up to six months.

Salick, which specializes in cancer treatment, already operates a breast cancer and bone marrow transplant center at Westlake and plans to use the additional space for a major expansion.

He said the company has already hired a specialist in breast cancer surgery and will be able to expand both inpatient and outpatient treatment in Westlake, spending as much as $15 million to $20 million to turn the hospital into a high-tech center for cases ranging from cancer to AIDS to transplants.

Salick said the hospital’s location--on the Ventura-Los Angeles county border--makes it a highly desirable spot.

“It is a primo area,” he said.

When Columbia acquired Westlake last year, Salick negotiated for the right to buy the facility, he said.

“It was Columbia’s intent all along to close up Westlake and have one big hospital at Los Robles,” Salick said.

As recently as August, Columbia had said it intended to keep the 126-bed Westlake hospital open. At that time the company reduced some services, closing the obstetrics ward and beginning to convert some space into an 18-bed rehabilitation center. But profits continued to dwindle.

“The bottom line is that we have not been able to make changes at the hospital where it is really economically viable to keep operating it,” Phelps said. “It’s not good for quality and it’s not good for economics.”

Phelps said Los Robles would absorb as many of Westlake’s 190 employees as possible and they will be given preferential treatment at some of the other facilities owned by Columbia, which includes a hospital in West Hills.

The new owners may also provide some relief. According to Salick, his company will hire some of the Westlake employees.

“We are certainly trying to, because we are in a major hiring phase,” he said.

Doctors, nurses and administrators at Westlake have had a rocky year, holding on to their jobs while the rumor mill churned out different versions of their fate. Wednesday, spokeswoman Jane Kelly declined to comment on the atmosphere at Westlake, saying only that “it’s just been a hard day here.”

Columbia acquired Westlake in late 1994 as part of a hospital swap after the Federal Trade Commission ordered it to divest itself of Aiken Regional Medical Center in Aiken, S.C.

Because the 317-hospital chain, based in Louisville, has closed 14 hospitals since it was founded in 1987, members of the county’s medical community had anticipated the possibility that Westlake would close since the merger was announced.

“It doesn’t surprise me,” said Sam Edwards, administrator at Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura.

Declines in occupancy have hit all the county’s hospitals, he said, though not as drastically as at Westlake. Five years ago, a local hospital could expect a 70% occupancy rate, but because of health-care changes, those figures now run closer to 50%, he said.

“How can you pay the bills with 14 patients a day?” Edwards said.