No Plans to Close Hospitals, Tenet Says

The chief executive of Tenet California said Wednesday at a public hearing that his company had no plans to close any of the 19 hospitals it has put up for sale in California.

Moreover, Dr. Stephen Newman said that any buyers would have to pledge to operate the hospitals as acute care centers as a condition of sale.

But Newman would not promise that the hospitals would remain open, and many public officials and community activists at the hearing of the Assembly Health Committee in Van Nuys were skeptical of the company’s intentions.

Public officials and community activists repeated their concerns that Tenet would not be able to find buyers for the hospitals it has put up for sale, forcing them to close.

“They’re saying that they have buyers, but clearly they do not,” said Assemblyman Dario Frommer (D-Los Feliz), who arranged the hearing with Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles).

Frommer told the gathering of less than 100 people that closing the hospitals would have a catastrophic impact on California’s healthcare system, but added there was little the state could do about the sale.

“The state really has no regulatory power to say no,” he said. “It’s like the Wild West out there.”

Tenet announced last week that it would sell the hospitals, 14 of them in Los Angeles County, primarily because the company could not afford $1.6 billion in seismic retrofitting. By comparison, retrofitting for the 17 California hospitals that Tenet plans to keep will cost $300 million.

To date, Newman said, none of the Tenet hospitals in California was up to code.

Newman said Tenet’s financial health was so poor that holding onto the 19 hospitals would compromise the quality of care at all of them. He said reaching the decision to sell was “painful and difficult,” but necessary.

“We strongly believe that the hospitals can be successful under new ownership,” he said.

Assemblyman Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles) doubted the company could sell many of its hospitals, especially not by the end of the year, given the economic slump.

Newman said that more than 100 potential buyers had made inquiries. He would not identify them.

Carol Gunter, director of Los Angeles County’s Emergency Medical Services Agency, said the failure to sell the hospitals would require Tenet to close them, cutting off emergency services for needy communities and overwhelming remaining hospitals with patients.

“It’s not just about the sale of a hospital, it’s about the effect on emergency and critical systems overall,” she said.

“If one little part changes, it dominoes through the whole system.”

County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke said the state should take steps to protect communities from the possibility of losing so many hospitals at once. “That one owner has the ability to affect that many hospitals in a small area is unconscionable,” she said. Five of the hospitals for sale are in her district.

Frommer asked the state Department of Health Services and the state Emergency Medical Services Authority to complete a study in 90 days on the impact hospital closures would have on trauma systems and emergency services in their communities.