Council to seek help on medical options

Barbara Diamond

To each his own is pretty much how city and South Coast Medical

Center officials left it on Tuesday night.

The council voted unanimously to hire a consultant to study ways

to keep the hospital or equivalent services in town. Hospital

officials, who have been considering a relocation for more than a

year, already have hired consultants to advise them.

“I never thought I was the most ‘Pollyannish’ person on the

council, but I want the hospital to stay here as it is, and I am not

willing to give up,” said Mayor Cheryl Kinsman, unhappy with the

notion of equivalent services.

The council voted to appropriate $50,000 to pay for a consultant.

Four votes were required because the money dips into the city’s

reserve funds.

“I think this will cost more,” Councilwoman Toni Iseman said. “But

the consultant may find a boutique hospital interested in coming in.”

Wording of a request for proposals from consultants will be

tweaked and submitted to the council at Tuesday’s meeting.

Gary Irish, chief executive officer of the medical center,

declined to share with the city the expense of a consultant.

Irish said the center already has hired two consultants at

substantially higher fees than the city is proposing.

“It is important for the city to determine what the city needs,”

Irish said.

What the hospital needs is 30 acres, Irish said, when asked what

the city could provide to keep the hospital here.

“Tell us what we can do,” Councilman Wayne Baglin. “Otherwise, we

are just spitting in the wind.”

The city cannot force the hospital to stay in town. However,

limited uses allowed on the site could make the sale of the property

more difficult -- and the money would be needed to relocate the

hospital, estimated by hospital officials to be $100 million.

Irish said the medical center will continue to provide services to

Laguna Beach and residents of other communities. He did not say from

what location.

Hospital officials have previously said that state-mandated

seismic retrofitting is a root cause of their relocation study

because of the $72 million it would cost to bring the South Laguna

facility up to required standards and to update the infrastructure.

The problem, officials have said, is that even if they spent the

money, they would still be at the same site, which they claimed does

not draw enough patients or the doctors to treat them.

The need for a hospital in Laguna Beach became a priority in the

mid-1950s when a police officer shot in the line of duty died on his

way to a distant hospital. Mission and Saddleback hospitals were

still 10 or 15 years down the road.

“It’s harder now than it was in the 1950s for people to get out of

town,” Dicterow said. “We need to deal with [this] now before it

becomes a crisis.”

Kinsman said that if the hospital relocates outside of Laguna the

time to get patients to a hospital would dramatically increase.

Relocation, she said, would also deplete the city’s emergency

services while paramedics and firefighters accompanied patients out

of town.

“We have the best emergency room and a top-notch hospital and we

want to keep it,” Kinsman said.

Laguna residents organized to raise money to build the

not-for-profit South Coast Community Hospital in 1957 on land donated

by Myford Irvine.

“When you consider all the local people who raised money to build

the hospital, it’s pretty low down [to move it],” Spitaleri said

recently. “I could almost smell it coming when Adventist took over

and the hospital was no longer independent. Locals no longer had a

say.”

Adventist Health System merged with the hospital in 1998,

providing sorely needed financial support, resources, management and

technology, South Coast Medical Center Foundation President Joe Orsak

said. The center operates under the guidance of a 21-member governing

board of directors.

The seismic retrofit mandate was passed by the Legislature in

1994. The deadline is 2008, but an extension to 2013 has been

requested.

“If we don’t meet the deadline, we go out of business as an acute

care facility,” Irish said.

Baglin said he fears that hospital officials have already made

their decision and he would prefer them to be forthright about their

intentions.

“They own [the hospital],” Baglin said. “They can do what ... they

want with it. I can see spending money to tell them what our needs

are, but not where they should be.”

The council must consider what would be best for the city even if

the hospital moves, Dicterow said.

“Listening to the hospital, it is clear there are issues, but the

best decision for the hospital may not be the best decision for us,”

Dicterow said.