Mending the Health-Care Safety Net

Last-minute reprieves have become somewhat routine for High Desert Hospital, which was saved from closure yet again last week after the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors agreed to keep funding the Lancaster facility. To its credit, the board vowed to keep High Desert open until poor and uninsured residents of the Antelope Valley have access to alternative health care.

That may be a long time.

The Department of Health Services has already spent two years trying to find a private company to take over the hospital as the county tries to restructure its ailing health-care system. No one appears to want the tiny hospital, hard against a state prison, in part because of the county’s requirement that a private operator continue service to the poor.

County budget officials had proposed cutting off funding to the hospital by Monday, regardless of whether it had been taken over. But when the sole company interested in the hospital backed out of talks earlier this month, the board truly understood what it means to be the health-care provider of last resort.

Despite the $6.6 million it will cost to keep the hospital open until the end of the year, simply shutting it down could cost much more. Last year, the hospital admitted 1,350 patients and handled 59,000 outpatient visits. So the board faced the unforgiving choice of spending money it doesn’t have or endangering the health of thousands of the county’s poorest residents.

Clearly, no white knight is on the horizon for High Desert, so it’s up to county administrators to find creative ways of delivering care at less cost. To that end, a few ideas have already surfaced, including operating primary care clinics in conjunction with Antelope Valley Hospital and the city of Palmdale.

Proposals like that deserve a close look because the people of the Antelope Valley deserve a reliable safety net. The hospital’s fate appears secure until at least the end of the year, but county health officials should use that time to aggressively explore alternatives. What a Christmas gift it would be to deliver medical care that the Antelope Valley could count on from one month to the next.