Hospitals fear possible High Desert closure

By LISA WAHLA
Valley Press Staff Writer

April 1, 2001 

The possible closure of the only local county-run hospital would dramatically affect medical care for all Valley residents, even those with insurance, local health-care experts say.

If Lancaster's High Desert Hospital were to close - a cost-saving idea the county health director brought up last month - Antelope Valley residents could expect much longer waits for emergency room care and hospital beds.

High Desert has no emergency room and its uninsured, underinsured and indigent patients have used the ERs at Lancaster Community Hospital and Antelope Valley Hospital for years. But if it closes, patients who would have used High Desert for primary care likely would try to be seen by ER personnel.

The disastrous effect would be the loss of High Desert's 82 patient beds in a community that needs more beds as it is, say local experts. AV Hospital operates about 350 beds and Lancaster Community Hospital has about 120, so the loss of High Desert would mean a 15% decrease in patient bed space.

"The last thing this community needs is less health care, especially of the traumatic kind when you need to be hospitalized," said Ebe Winter, director of community relations for Lancaster Community Hospital. "We had four hospitals when we had 50,000 people total in the Valley. Now we have three, (and the county is) saying let's go down to two, when the population is now 10 times that.

"It doesn't stand to reason."

A local Kaiser Permanente official said that if High Desert closed, the loss of beds would hurt Kaiser patients as well.

"Losing that number is a significant issue," said Ken Murtishaw, Kaiser's assistant medical group administrator.

The fallout would likely hit AV Hospital hard, as the Valley's largest hospital and busiest ER would presumably grow even busier.

AV Hospital CEO Mathew Abraham said the average wait for ER care is four to five hours, and sometimes much longer. On a recent morning - slow by AV standards but still bustling - empty beds lined the hallways, ready for action. Those beds aren't counted in the ER's official bed total of 28.

"There will be more pressure on us to accommodate their patients in beds we don't have" if High Desert closed, Abraham said.

Gary Hill, a member of the Antelope Valley Hospital board of directors, agreed. "On any typical day we have anywhere from five to 20 people coming out of the emergency room and having to wait for a bed."

Abraham estimated that about 10% of AV Hospital's ER patients lack insurance, an expense the hospital bears without county, state or federal compensation.

Besides the bed loss if High Desert were to close, Abraham said ending the county hospital's primary care services would be a "severe loss."

That would exacerbate a "revolving door" situation that lengthens ER waits: Low-income patients too often fail to receive basic preventative care, so illnesses that would be easy to treat if diagnosed early degenerate into serious, costly problems.

Los Angeles County's Health Services Department faces an $850 million deficit in five years and is trying to pare its budget. If cost-cutting measures fail, one contingency plan includes High Desert closure. John Wallace, a Health Services spokesman, said the contingency plan does not include closing the three clinics the county runs in conjunction with the Antelope Valley Health Care District.