Thread: Three hospitals in danger of closing San Diego, CA

More Here: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metr ... ealth.html

By Cheryl Clark
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
July 25, 2006

At least 3 hospitals serving many poor and uninsured people south of I-8 are in danger of financial collapse. Few physician specialists will accept such patients. And the county lacks a system to coordinate their care.

Here is the entire article. Not surprising info. Same has happened in LA as we know.

hospitals south of I-8 could fail, report says

By Cheryl Clark
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
July 25, 2006

At least 3 hospitals serving many poor and uninsured people south of I-8 are in danger of financial collapse. Few physician specialists will accept such patients. And the county lacks a system to coordinate their care.

Those are three of 24 serious weaknesses in San Diego County's broken safety net that more than 900,000 Medi-Cal beneficiaries and uninsured residents depend on for medical care, according to a draft of a county-commissioned report released yesterday.

The resulting challenges are likely to grow as this population continues to rise.

In particular, San Diego County ranks last in the state for county spending per uninsured resident, the report said.

“There's a strong gap in leadership, the lack of countywide coordination,” said Mike Williams of The Abaris Group in Walnut Creek. The county Board of Supervisors hired the consultants last year for $600,000 to analyze the way the region provides safety-net health care and write the Healthcare Safety Net Study.

The lack of a lead agency leads to “a fragile patchwork” of care, the survey found.

For example, community clinics don't offer after-hours services; patients have long waits to be seen by a hospital emergency room or clinic staff; and there's limited coordination of care for uninsured people diagnosed with cancer, mental illness or chronic disease.

The situation may worsen, the report said.

By 2025, the number of hospital beds and emergency department treatment stations is expected to increase. But this expansion will not keep pace with demand and will not be added to facilities in central and South County, where many of the uninsured and Medi-Cal patients live.

The Abaris Group used population and demographic statistics from the San Diego Association of Governments to project that the county will need 959 more hospital beds by 2025.

While hospital providers have planned to add 861 hospital beds by then, most of them will be in the North Inland and North Central regions.

The county government shares some of the blame, according to the report, because it has not pursued millions of dollars in health funds, such as the $8 million available from the Children's Health Initiative, a program of The California Endowment.

And the County Medical Services program, which covers last-resort health care for medically indigent adults, fails to pay for prevention programs and has a long qualification process fraught with bottlenecks, Williams said.

Although the county recently expanded the program's eligibility criteria to satisfy a court order, some patient advocates said that many of the working poor still fall through the cracks because they make just a bit too much to qualify.

As a result, they can't get care or medication unless they become so sick they must be seen in an emergency room.

County Supervisor Ron Roberts applauded the honesty of the report.

“I'm not offended that the report gives us things to do,” he said. “That's the whole reason we put money into this. The reason is to have a better system.”

The study was commissioned last year after the University of California San Diego Medical Center announced plans to move nearly 400 licensed, acute-care beds at its Hillcrest campus to its Thornton Hospital in La Jolla.

UCSD plans to shift 150 to 175 of those beds to La Jolla in eight to 10 years, said its chief executive officer, Richard Liekweg. The rest would be moved at a later date, he said.

The Hillcrest facility's emergency room and its clinicians now see a large number of the working poor who live in the central and South County.

When the relocation plan goes through, these patients would likely go to Sharp Chula Vista Hospital, the Scripps Mercy hospitals in Hillcrest and Chula Vista, or Paradise Valley Hospital in National City.

The prospect of taking on more poor patients has infuriated executives for Scripps Chula Vista and Paradise Valley, two of the three financially burdened hospitals.

“We know this is going to put enormous financial pressure on us,” said Chris Van Gorder, chief executive officer of Scripps Health. For instance, Scripps Mercy Chula Vista lost $61 million during the past six years, including $6 million in the most recent fiscal year, he said.

At a town hall meeting yesterday to discuss the safety net study, The Abaris Group's Williams said the CEO of Paradise Valley Hospital told him that when UCSD moves its acute-care beds to La Jolla, his hospital may be forced to close as well.

The future of a third hospital south of I-8, Alvarado Hospital Medical Center, is uncertain. Its owners are under a federal order to sell or close the facility by February or lose federal reimbursement for care. So far, no purchase offers have been made public.

The Abaris Group and county officials will hold town meetings in the next several weeks to get public comments. A final report is expected in early fall.

The county paid for half of the study's cost, while the other half came from The California Endowment.

The endowment rarely funds such research in the belief that health-needs assessments are the responsibility of each county. But it agreed to subsidize the project because of the “harsh and counterproductive” comments by UCSD, Scripps and other hospital officials over UCSD's relocation plans, said Greg Hall, the endowment's San Diego program officer.

“The endowment believes that the first step toward understanding and fixing the crisis is having solid, reliable, objective data, and the Abaris study provides just that,” Hall said.

The report credited the county's large network of 90 community clinics and the fact that those clinics have the second highest utilization rate in the state – 160 patients per 1,000 population. It also praised the county's six-hospital trauma system, and several programs providing services to the mentally ill, substance abusers and the homeless.

But it said San Diego health providers are disadvantaged by Medicare's payment formula, which lumps the county with 32 rural California counties, and by Medi-Cal, which pays hospitals in San Diego County less than their counterparts in many urban regions.



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Well you know what that means....higher taxes in California. It's coming folks; as long as illegals are allowed to live here, WE the California taxpayers will be forced to pay for it.

Not only that americangirl, it means they are going to move on and migrate to the next set of hospitals. It's like a plague to hospitals.

Dixie

You're right, Dixie. And it genuinely burns me up that SOMEBODY has to pay for this, and that somebody is the U.S. taxpayer. You watch....property taxes will go up, income tax will go up, sales tax will go up.

THE DAMNED LEECHES!!!!!!!!!!

Now, now, American Girl, watch your blood pressure.
You don't want to over burden the system by going to the ER.

Two of these hospital's that are in danger of being closed. Were on the last primary elections to tax San Diego citizens to keep these hospitals open. Even after people were fooled into passing the prop. the hospitals are still in danger of being closed. What happens now to the tax monies?

Howdy,

Has anyone sent this article on to McCain, et al?