Amid Protests, Longtime Hospital in La Habra Closes

La Habra’s longtime community hospital locked its doors at 12:01 a.m. Friday, but angry community members stood vigil outside Friendly Hills Regional Medical Center throughout the day to protest its closure.

“La Habra Needs a Hospital” and “Honk If You Hate HMOs” read placards held up by demonstrators, to a cacophony of automobile horns.

Former employees also showed up to attend a job fair and to eat a barbecue lunch prepared by La Habra firefighters, who until the hospital’s closure had delivered sick and injured patients to its emergency room.

“We’re losing the only emergency facilities there are in this city,” said protester Robert Rivas, 60, who lives just two minutes from the closed hospital. “I’m really disappointed, and I think the city fathers should have stepped in and bought it.”

Said Susan Freeze, a resident who organized the demonstration: “We’re just ticked off. . . . We know it’s not anyone’s fault, that it’s just a business decision, but it’s hurting us, the community.”

County emergency medical officials said the next-closest hospitals--St. Jude Hospital in Fullerton, 3 1/2 miles away, or Brea Community Hospital, 1 1/2 miles away--are able to handle the emergency cases.

Dr. Bruce Haynes, medical director of Orange County Emergency Medical Services, said paramedics now will take patients to St. Jude, Brea Community or Whittier hospitals, which will require “only a few more minutes” of travel.

The added time, however, is worrisome, said La Habra Fire Capt. Derek Holland.

“It definitely will have an impact on the city, and nobody is happy about what’s going on,” he said.

The local Meals on Wheels program, for which food was prepared in the Friendly Hills hospital kitchen, also was displaced by the closure. Officials found a new kitchen at a nursing home, Integrated Health Services at Park Regency in La Habra. There was no interruption in service of the meals to 60 homebound La Habra and La Habra Heights senior citizens.

Although the hospital officially closed Friday, it effectively had been on life support for weeks.

Its impending shutdown had been announced five weeks ago by owner MedPartners Inc. of Birmingham, Ala. Doctors had stopped admitting patients more than a week ago, and paramedics had not transported a patient to the emergency room for about five days, officials said.

Patients in the hospital beds had been transferred to two nearby facilities: Whittier Hospital Medical Center and Placentia Linda Community Hospital. Both are owned by Tenet Healthcare Corp. of Santa Barbara, with which MedPartners has an agreement, a spokeswoman said.

MedPartners officials said they closed the hospital, which opened in 1972, because it was losing money. For the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, an average of only 29.8% of Friendly Hills’ beds--which numbered 198 as of Friday--were occupied, compared to an average 48.1% occupancy rate at hospitals nationwide.

About 560 employees were affected by the closure, with 98 of them offered jobs at the Whittier hospital, said Joyce Hawthorne, MedPartners spokeswoman.

But some employees said Friday they had been assured a year ago that the hospital would not close and that their jobs were secure.

Sylvia Romo, a La Habra resident and hospital cook for the past 11 years, said Friday was her last day. Most other employees left Thursday, she said.

“They promised to find us work somewhere else, but this is it. There’s nothing. . . . We can find jobs. I don’t really care about that. I do care that this community is losing something valuable,” she said.

Dr. Marvin Rice, the hospital’s chief executive officer, hugged laid-off employees Friday and wished them well. He said the hospital was getting old, had asbestos problems and too many empty beds, so MedPartners found “it made no financial sense to invest money in the hospital.

“The health care environment is such that we have too many hospital beds in California,” he said.

Laid-off nurses, doctors and others lamented the closure as they commiserated Friday.

Although hospital inpatient care had been restricted to patients of Friendly Hills Medical Group, the hospital’s emergency room was open to any ill or injured person, regardless of type of insurance.

Many people who live nearby, especially poor people used to walk or ride the bus to the hospital and will not be able to get emergency care easily, said Dr. Janet Meyer, the emergency room doctor who completed her last day at work Thursday night.

“I’m employable,” Meyer said. “I can get a job, but a lot of the people that were laid off are getting close to 60, not ready to retire. It’s going to be very difficult for them to find something else.”

Several employers--including hospitals and businesses ranging from cosmetics distributors to hotel chains--handed out applications and accepted resumes at tables set up outside the Friendly Hills complex. Employees looked over the materials while waiting in line for hamburgers, potato salad and cookies prepared by the firefighters, half of whom left abruptly when an emergency call came in.

St. Jude Medical Center job recruiter LeVell McCune’s briefcase was jammed with resumes. She said she was recruiting for 200 open jobs at the Fullerton hospital. Another hospital in Upland was recruiting for 39 jobs.

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Hospital Closes

Nearby Acute-Care Hospitals With Emergency Rooms

1. Brea Community Hospital, Distance: 1.5 miles

2. St. Jude Medical Center (Fullerton) Distance: 3.5 miles

3. Placentia Lind Community Hospital, Distance: 6.3 miles

4. Whittier Hospital Medical Center, Distance: 6.3 miles

5. Martin Luther Hospital (Anaheim) Distance: 7.1 miles

6. Anaheim Memorial Hospital, Distance: 7.2 miles

7. Presbyterian Intercomm. Hospital, Distance: 8 miles

Sources: Healthcare Assn. of Southern California and Zip2.Com; Researched by JANICE JONES DODDS/ Los Angeles Times