Long Beach Community Medical Center to Close by End of Year

After suffering steady financial losses since 1995, 76-year-old Long Beach Community Medical Center will close by the end of December and transfer all surgical and acute medical care to St. Mary Medical Center.

Officials of Catholic Healthcare West of Southern California, which operates both hospitals, said Friday that they decided to shut down the 278-bed Long Beach Community because an 18-month effort to return the facility to profitability has failed.

Faced with declining patient loads and lower reimbursement rates from public and private insurance programs, hospital officials estimate that the medical center lost $13.5 million last year and $37.7 million since 1995. Losses of $12.7 million are projected for 2000.

“The board has asked management to move forward expeditiously with this process in light of continuing, unacceptably high operating losses,” said Jerry Kozai, a senior vice president for Catholic Healthcare West. “We believe that we can better serve the residents of Long Beach by concentrating our resources on a single campus.”

Hospital officials said an urgent-care clinic will be opened in east Long Beach to handle roughly 80% of the patients now seen by the medical center’s emergency room.

They also said Long Beach Community’s new cancer center will remain open and that some doctors will maintain offices at the site on North Termino Avenue. St. Mary, where the rest of the facility’s services will be transferred, is a 526-bed facility on Linden Avenue near downtown Long Beach.

“Our goal now is to accomplish this conversion in a way that enhances the continuum of care for the community while maintaining a tradition of compassion and quality that has been established over the past 75 years,” said Beth O’Brien, president and chief executive officer of Catholic Healthcare West, which owns 12 medical centers.

Long Beach Community opened in 1924 with 100 beds and a staff of 175. Today, the hospital has 278 beds and employs about 700. Over the years, the facility has steadily added services, including the city’s first CAT scan unit, the area’s first cancer clinic and the first communicable-disease unit.

Hospital officials blamed a variety of problems for the closing, from the high cost of retrofitting Long Beach Community to meet earthquake safety standards to an oversupply of acute-care hospital beds in the area.

With 13 major medical centers in and around the harbor area, state figures indicate that there are 30% more beds than needed in Long Beach.

According to the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development, hospitals across the country are facing declining reimbursement rates for services from public and private insurance programs such as Medi-Cal and Medicare.

State officials estimate that about 64% of all hospitals in California are losing money for services, partly because of low Medi-Cal payment levels.

Long Beach Community officials also said that two major physicians groups with almost 60,000 patients decided to start sending their clients to other Long Beach medical centers.

News of the closure caught many city officials by surprise and left them wondering why Catholic Healthcare West had not requested help from the city to overcome the facility’s difficulties.

“We were unprepared for the shock and immediacy of this decision,” said Mayor Beverly O’Neill. “We realize that there were financial problems, but during the 18 months that Long Beach Community and St. Mary hospitals were owned by Catholic Healthcare West, there was no effort to work with the city of Long Beach to resolve their problems.”

O’Neill said the city would have been willing to work with the hospital had it been given the opportunity. Although the major decisions have already been made, O’Neill said, she hoped Catholic Healthcare West would turn to the city for assistance on any remaining issues.