Coalition Seeking Hospital Investor, But Time Is Short
By LAURENCE DARMIENTO
Staff Reporter
A loose coalition of community and labor groups is looking to find a buyer for Daniel Freeman Marina Hospital that Tenet Healthcare Corp. plans to close in 60 days.
If they fail at that, the groups, along with County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, are seeking to maintain some level of emergency or urgent care at the site. They say that plans by Tenet to expand a stand-alone urgent care facility near Los Angeles International Airport are not adequate.
In order to buy time, the coalition is asking Tenet not to surrender the hospital’s state license upon closure to make for a quick transfer to another operator.
“The hospital needs to be put back out there (for sale) to see if there are other potential buyers. They need to keep that license intact, said Lark Galloway-Gilliam, executive director of the Community Health Councils, a non-profit health advocacy group. “And they really need to commit to a decent urgent care center.”
Tenet announced plans to close the hospital last month, just six months after spending $57 million to acquire it and its sister Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital from Carondolet Health System Inc., a St. Louis-based Catholic system.
Tenet is beefing up services at Freeman Memorial but determined that the Marina hospital is losing money because few people use it, a situation that after reviewing doctor referral patterns they decided was unlikely to change.
Tenet spokesman Harry Anderson said the company is open to discussion, but does not believe there is a buyer for the facility. He also stood by the company’s private property rights.
“The Sisters of Carondolet tried for about three years to find anybody who would buy those hospitals and maintain their not-for-profit status and they couldn’t. The fact is patients don’t go there and doctors don’t refer there,” he said.
“We are certainly willing to sit down with Supervisor Burke and anyone else to discuss the future of that property. But if their plan is that we should sit there with a vacant piece of property for an unlimited period of time while we find out if somehow or someway there is some group who could operate it, we cannot agree to that.”
Clinic expansion defended
Anderson also defended Tenet’s decision to expand its Centinela Airport Medical Clinic near LAX, saying it’s less than two miles from the Marina facility and will be upgraded to handle 70 to 80 percent of the emergency cases that the hospital did.
But Galloway-Gilliam countered that the clinic is too difficult to get to in the heavily trafficked area, a position affirmed by Burke, who is calling on the county to work with private businesses to save some medical services in the area.
Burke said that since Tenet will almost undoubtedly put the Marina property up for sale, business owners in the area should consider a joint development that would include a commercial project with an urgent care center.
Galloway-Gilliam said her group is working on a proposal that it plans to release in the next few weeks. Also working to save medical access in the area is the Service Employees International Union, which does not represent Marina employees but has tangled with Tenet at other, unionized hospitals.
“Since Tenet frequently boasts that it helps communities by turning around money-losing hospitals let them put their money where their mouth is,” said Maura Kealey, a health care coordinator for the SEIU. “And if Tenet doesn’t want to operate the Marina as a hospital they should seek out someone who does.”
