EDITORIAL: Questions swirl on hospital

Revelations about the South Coast Medical Center Foundation’s disbanding have rocked the community, especially those who care deeply about keeping a hospital in Laguna Beach. But that’s not the only thing troubling some on the now-defunct board and those on the outside.

The reported salaries of the chief executive ($360,000) chief financial officer ($300,000) and chaplain ($200,000), and the leaked but confirmed report that the hospital had been paying an additional “administrative fee” to Adventist Health System of $500,000 a month “” while claiming an annual “loss” in that exact amount “” makes one wonder if the facility was being operated in the best interest of the hospital.

No doubt the people who filled those posts are highly talented and may be worth the money in good times, but considering the fact that Adventist closed down its maternity ward last spring, claiming it was losing $1 million a year, the numbers just don’t add up.

The maternity ward was by all accounts very well-respected, provided a unique service in the field by permitting midwives and other alternative birth methods, and its closure resulted in mothers with babes-in-arms picketing before the Laguna Beach City Council.

Clearly the heads of the hospital were not “getting it,” and gosh, if they had just cut down their “administrative fee” to Adventist by, say, 10%, they could have balanced the books and kept the maternity ward intact.

Now Adventist, a religious-affiliated health care firm, has found what appears to be a bigger, very solid potential buyer in St. Joseph Health System.

This brings up another thicket of issues that the community needs to be concerned about.

St. Joseph is an order of Catholic nuns and the hospital will therefore be under the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, a list of 72 “directives” published by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops under the Vatican.

Many of these directives limit health care services to women, particularly in the area of reproductive health. Contraceptives are only allowed if they serve a purpose other than stopping pregnancies “” for instance, to treat menstrual pain. But, according to a St. Joseph ethicist, “emergency contraception” “” in the case of a rape or incest “” is allowed.

The Attorney General’s office is now in the process of a thorough review of the hospital’s sale, and will be looking at it from many aspects.

The attorney general has the final say on whether a sale will go through. In the meantime, a lot of the questions the community has about the current owner have yet to be answered.