Break Up Brings New Ownership to 3 Medical Centers

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Break Up Brings New Ownership to 3 Medical Centers

Health Care

by Laurence Darmiento

There’s another major hospital operator in Los Angeles County.

The Daughters of Charity Health System has taken over three hospitals after formally breaking its ties earlier this month with Catholic Healthcare West, the largest Catholic health system in the western U.S.

Robert F. Kennedy Medical Center in Hawthorne, St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood and St. Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles are being operated again by the Daughters of Charity, Province of the West, which decided last year to exit the system.

The daughters originally joined San Francisco-based CHW in 1995 during its rapid growth. But during the late 1990s the 48-hospital system experienced operating losses that topped $300 million annually.

A reorganization spurred the daughters departure, since it would have left them with little control over their hospitals. The new daughters system has seven hospitals.

“The Daughters of Charity have been in California for 50 years now. Their principal focus is to care for the sick and poor, and we will continue to operate in that light,” said daughter’s Chief Executive Brian Connolly.

Business Blues

There’s no doubt that businesses are fed up with rapidly escalating health care premiums, but so much so that they are willing to swallow state-sponsored universal health care?

That’s the spin the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights the Santa Monica-based group that engineered insurance industry reform is putting on a survey it conducted of businesses as part of an effort to reform the health care system.

But a closer look at the numbers casts doubt that there’s been such a change of heart.

A survey of 127 business executives found they think the quality of health care is dropping even as costs and HMO bureaucracy rise.

The foundation notes that as a solution, 70 percent would support a universal coverage system that mandates business participation, with payments linked to size.

But the question presupposes a guarantee that such a system would lower costs. Without that guarantee, support drops to 32 percent with 63 percent in opposition, as would be expected.

Lonely Lawyers

If Congress decides to take up the stalled patient bill of rights this year, it might want to look at California for some guidance.

A key dispute stalling the bill in Washington has been how much latitude patients should have to sue their HMOs. Health insurers fear a rush to the courthouse if state lawsuits are allowed, but that’s not been the result in California, where residents have had a limited right to sue for more than a year.

Daniel Zingale, director of the state’s Department of Managed Health Care, says he does not know of a single such lawsuit since HMO reforms were passed here in 1999.

“If you give patients the choice between a lawyer and a doctor, they will see a doctor every time,” Zingale said.

Staff reporter Laurence Darmiento can be reached at (323) 549-5225 ext. 237 or at

[email protected]

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