Hospital Due to Lose Funds Is Recognized for Excellence
Even on its best days, the bad news seems to outweigh the good at High Desert Hospital in Lancaster.
On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors presented High Desert with a plaque for scoring among the nation’s top 4% in an accreditation exam last month.
Alas, the bad news is that the good news will not keep the board from yanking funding from High Desert by June 30, when the county is scheduled to privatize the hospital in order to save money.
“With all the talk of privatization and all the pressure on the staff, in the midst of all that, this is an extraordinary accomplishment by an extraordinary group of people,” Mark Finucane, director of the county Department of Health Services told the supervisors.
The high score also shows how far the hospital has come since 1995, when a state inspection found that the hospital staff mishandled radiation. A county report at the same time ordered the replacement of the hospital’s top administrators due to mismanagement after an investigation found, among other things, that a physician charged with sexual battery had continued to see patients.
In the recent test, High Desert scored 98 out of a possible 100 points during a March 1997 field evaluation by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations, a private, nonprofit group that surveys 16,000 hospitals and other health care facilities in the United States.
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