Activists Protest L.A. County’s Plan to Shut Down Rehabilitation Center

Since the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors voted to close Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center late last month, a movement to save the center has been percolating throughout the county and state, particularly among the disabled.

Health workers, independent living centers, and an alliance of people with spinal cord injuries, cerebral palsy and diabetes and other ailments and injuries treated at Rancho are rallying to keep the 207-bed Downey center open.

Kathleen Austria, an official in the union that represents 19,000 county health workers, said many people felt blindsided by the supervisors’ Oct. 29 vote. “People went from shock to anger and now they’re ready to fight, “ said Austria, who is a rehabilitation nurse at County-USC Medical Center.

Since transportation is difficult for many people with disabilities, organizing the thousands of people opposed to closing Rancho has occurred mainly through teleconferences, letter-writing campaigns and online petitions. Demonstrations led by the health workers union are planned at Rancho on Monday and at the supervisors’ meeting Tuesday.

In Pasadena, Fran Ozer, 42, is blitzing the supervisors daily with angry letters and e-mail. A year ago, she was a patient at Rancho after emergency back surgery left her paralyzed below the waist. At the time she did not have insurance, and the county covered her nine-week stay, at a cost of $4,700 a day, until Medi-Cal later paid most of the bill and she was left with a share. Ozer, who is a curatorial assistant at the Skirball Cultural Center, credits “amazing physical and occupational therapists” at Rancho for her turnaround.

“The money they vested in me was well spent; I am now back at work, paying taxes, completely off state support and walking with braces and crutches,” she said.

Ray Corvan, executive director of the ALS Assn. of Greater Los Angeles, said his organization is “doing everything we can to save Rancho.” (ALS is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, often called Lou Gehrig’s disease.) “All of our patients are terminal when they get this diagnosis, and the compassion and love” they get at Rancho is so important for people grappling with the disease, he said.

The 450 members are participating in the letter-writing campaign but their hopes are not high that the county will reverse the closure decision. “I’m afraid it feels like we’re fighting a bureaucracy,” Corvan said.

Rancho Los Amigos treats about 9,500 people each year for a variety of catastrophic injuries and ailments including stroke and diabetes, liver problems, and spinal cord and head injuries. The county health department predicts closing it will save $58.6 million next year and then $65 million to $70 million annually.

Although they voted to close Rancho, the supervisors also agreed to hire an independent consultant to examine the health services department’s fiscal analysis of the hospital.

“We’ll have more data to assess soon and I’m open to what the numbers show,” said Dr. Thomas Garthwaite, health department director.

Garthwaite said he sympathizes with all the people and organizations lobbying him and the supervisors to keep Rancho Los Amigos.

“I know many people are upset about this, and Rancho’s excellence is not at all at issue,” Garthwaite said. “But I came here with a clear mandate to solve this budget situation and prevent this kind of crisis from recurring.”

At Southern California Rehabilitation Services, which provides help for disabled people to live independently, officials are rallying their 1,000 clients to argue that the county ultimately will spend more on their health care if Rancho closes.

“We are connecting with each of our clients to determine exactly how many will suffer from this,” said Sandy Chu, community advocate at the center, which is located directly across the street from the Rancho campus.

Some organizations outside Los Angeles County are rallying to Rancho’s cause for practical reasons. The California Foundation for Independent Living Centers, a statewide nonprofit group in Sacramento, relies on Rancho Los Amigos for its expertise about technology that allows people who are paralyzed to drive and engage in other everyday activities.

“If Rancho closes, it will take with it half the statewide assisted technology network,” said the foundation’s Patricia Yaeger.

The rush to organize opposition to Rancho’s closing illustrates the disabled community’s lack of political clout, said Sean Casey O’Brien, co-founder of Unique People’s Voting Project and KPFK radio talk show host who focuses on disability issues.

“What’s really sad is about a million and a half of disabled citizens of voting age in Los Angeles are silent,” he said “If we could get a quarter of them out to vote this wouldn’t happen--they wouldn’t dare.”