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Posted on 01/18/2003 12:48:09 PM PST by FITZ
(LOS ANGELES) If Los Angeles County's struggling public health care system goes under it will overwhelm private hospitals, a doctor said Friday.
"If the public hospitals go broke and go belly up, there's gonna be an avalanche on the private sector and I can tell you, we can't handle it," Dr. Brian Johnston said. "We will go down."
Private hospitals already are near capacity after a decade's worth of trauma center and emergency room closures, he said.
"I have patients waiting in my waiting room for five, six, seven and eight hours," Johnston, director of the emergency department at White Memorial Medical Center, said during a seminar on the county's health care crisis. "Emergency physicians are now talking about waiting room deaths and they are occurring."
Last year, the Board of Supervisors decided to cut costs by closing about a dozen county health clinics along with High Desert Hospital in Lancaster. The system of last resort for 2.5 million uninsured people is trying to close a $350 million budget gap this fiscal year.
At a news conference Friday, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said High Desert's closure was a "done deal," effective July 1, unless it can be sold.
A public hearing on a proposal to close Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center in Downey was scheduled later this month. However, the scheduled sale or closure of Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar and Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance were suspended indefinitely when county voters last fall approved a $170 million-a-year property tax hike to keep open trauma centers and emergency rooms.
The "current plan" is to keep the hospitals open, although some downsizing may occur, Yaroslavsky said.
Officials said future health care cuts would depend on how much federal and state aid is received. The county is awaiting word, expected within two weeks, that the federal government will waive certain requirements that effectively will provide about $150 million in aid.
Health officials have suggested a number of additional cost-cutting measures, including creating an electronic records system to better track patients and barring nonresidents of the county from receiving some care, at a potential savings of millions of dollars.
Yaroslavsky, meanwhile, blasted Gov. Gray Davis' plan to close a yawning state budget deficit, saying Davis wants to force local governments to assume the costs of state-required programs.
If the governor's budget passes, "it would be very hard not to look at further reductions" of the county's overall budget and would "bring closer" the threat of further health cuts, said David Janssen, the county's chief administrative officer.
By ROBERT JABLON, Associated Press Writer
Remove the illegal aliens and watch the public hospitals "get better".
Fat chance.
--Boris
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