Laguna Beach to launch effort to keep local emergency room
- Share via
Following an update from Providence Mission Hospital in Laguna Beach indicating significant changes may be in store for its operations, city officials are devising a work plan to keep an emergency room in town.
Seth Teigen, the chief executive of the hospital, addressed the City Council during a study session on Jan. 27. He said the hospital, which was built in 1959, is planning for its future while facing a 2030 deadline to bring the facility into seismic compliance with state regulations.
A seismic retrofitting of the hospital would represent an investment of approximately $300 million, as well as an estimated cost of $50 million for additional electrical and plumbing infrastructure improvements, Teigen said. He added that while the hospital intends to remain in town, it will have to operate differently due to the seismic constraints.
“That plan does not include running an acute care hospital,” Teigen said. “That plan is going to be doing healthcare in a very different way for Laguna Beach, and when we say acute care hospital, that includes our inpatient beds, and it also includes our emergency department. I think we recognize that is of greatest interest to this community is how they access urgent or emergent care.”
The potential loss of the local emergency room has quickly caught the attention of residents. Surrounding communities also serviced by the South Laguna-based Providence Mission Hospital include Aliso Viejo, Dana Point and Laguna Niguel.
“As the regulations stand in the state of California, you cannot operate a standalone emergency department,” Teigen explained. “An emergency department has to have essentially all of the accompanying departments that exist in the hospital today, such as ICU, medical surgical beds, an operating room, radiology department, pharmacy, laboratory, everything that you could imagine that’s part of running the overall operation. So essentially, you can have an acute care hospital or nothing, and those are the circumstances we find ourselves in now.”
Councilmembers Alex Rounaghi and Bob Whalen are serving on an ad hoc committee focusing on the issue. During Tuesday night’s meeting of the City Council, each expressed an interest in working with the hospital while inviting community members to share what they would like to see at the hospital site.
“I think that the goal here is to really clearly articulate what the city’s position is, which is that we really want to have an emergency room in town,” Rounaghi said. “When we think about the founding of that emergency room and why it exists, it exists because at the time, there was a police officer, [Gordon French], who died because he bled out before he was able to get to the nearest hospital. That need of having a close emergency room still exists today.”
Rounaghi noted that steps could include getting data from the fire department about calls for service, exploring the city’s powers with respect to land use and zoning, and looking at legal options.
“I think the goal of this effort is to articulate what is the city’s position here, make it very clear to all the stakeholders — especially the hospital — about what our position is, and get the community engaged,” Rounaghi said. “... I have to think there’s a win-win solution for both the city and the hospital to ensure that we can have a workable emergency room in town.”
