County Urged to Form Panel on Health Care Cuts : Budget: Supervisors take no action on plan targeting possible hospital closures. Board also hears complaints about state takeover of eight beaches.

Members of Los Angeles County’s health care community Monday urged the Board of Supervisors to form a public/private task force to try to avoid health care cutbacks that could force closure of several major county hospitals.

“I think we’ve been saying it for a long time, but nobody has felt that it was as serious until now,” said Joseph Vander Meulen, vice president of health services at USC. “We realize we have to put together a plan if we’re to maintain health services in Los Angeles County.”

The testimony came at a special public hearing on potential cuts in the Department of Health Services in the 1995-96 fiscal year.

County officials estimate the shortfall in the department’s $2.5-billion budget at anywhere from $100 million to $600 million.

Accordingly, health officials have proposed half a dozen options to scale back services, ranging from closing some community health clinics to a worst-case scenario that would eliminate 14,000 positions and shut three of the county’s busiest hospitals--County-USC, Harbor-UCLA and Olive View Medical Center.

Health officials have proposed as another cost-saving option the elimination of all outpatient services except emergency rooms.

Some community health advocates skipped the hearing in protest, contending that health officials provided too vague an outline of proposed cuts.

But Health Services Director Robert C. Gates said the wide variance in alternatives stems from uncertainty over what kind of impact state budget decisions and federal health care policies will have on the county.

“If we get no help from Washington or Sacramento and there is little leeway in what’s available from county general funds, then our shortfall is $600 million and we have to make that up somewhere,” Gates said.

Gates said he supports the idea of a public/private task force. But the board took no action to create such a body.

In another budget-related matter Monday, the supervisors heard arguments that the level of safety along Santa Monica Bay could decline when the state assumes control of eight county-run beaches and replaces county lifeguards with its own on Wednesday.

County lifeguards say the state was late in responding to an incident at remote state-run El Matador Beach Sunday afternoon, which resulted in the county helping a swimmer who fell from the cliffs and required hospitalization.

Dan Atkins, president of the Los Angeles County Lifeguard Assn., said state lifeguards arrived 15 minutes after the victim--cut and suffering from hypothermia and shock--was airlifted to a medical facility.

“Normally, we wouldn’t make a big deal about it, but it just happened last night,” Atkins said.

He urged the board to keep open negotiations that would continue a 40-year-long arrangement in which the county provided lifeguards and maintenance crews at eight state-owned beaches along the bay.

State officials last week broke off talks after refusing a county demand that the state enter into a long-term agreement to help pay for the services. Ken Jones, deputy director of the state Department of Parks and Recreation, told the board that he was unaware of Sunday’s incident but pledged that the state’s level of service would match the county’s.

“Our personnel (are) very well trained,” Jones said. “We are a department very experienced in lifeguarding services. I don’t know about this incident, but it happened at a beach that’s more of a primitive beach and not comparable to someplace like Malibu or Topanga. County lifeguards happened to have a strong presence in that area.”

The board voted to keep a dialogue with the state open, although both state and county officials conceded that it is unlikely that any new agreements will be reached.