Dire Prognosis:

An expansion of Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills was halted in midproject recently by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge. He ruled that the Los Angeles City Council must either order a more extensive environmental impact report or vote to approve the project. That pleased opponents of the expansion, including some neighborhood groups and the Service Employees International Union. Here are two opposing editorials on the issue, one by a leader of the opposition and another by the chief executive of the medical center.

By KERRY CARMODY

The four-story steel frame that will brace the much-needed expansion of Providence Holy Cross Medical Center stands today against gloomy winter skies, a fitting illustration of our disappointment that the Los Angeles City Council failed to act swiftly to get this project back on track before recessing for the holidays.

While an overwhelming number of residents, workers and community leaders have shown their support for the expansion, we are dismayed that special interests, led by Councilman Richard Alarcon, stand in the way of a simple vote to restate the City Council’s 2007 approval of our expansion.

To meet the growing health care needs in the Valley, Providence Holy Cross is building a privately funded 136-bed addition.

This new wing will house more intensive-care unit beds, more rooms to observe patients who came through our busy Emergency Department, updated labor and delivery rooms, and a neonatal intensive care unit. Without that NICU, critically ill infants now are separated from their mothers and transported to hospitals with the necessary facilities.

In planning this new wing, Providence Holy Cross worked with the city of Los Angeles and followed all its recommendations and rules. Planning officials requested a Mitigated Negative Declaration be completed to address any environmental concerns such as parking and traffic impacts. A full Environmental Impact Report, the planning staff advised, was not the appropriate document in preparing to build a project of this size to expand an existing medical facility.

The city Planning Commission unanimously approved the project in 2007. That action was appealed, but Councilman Alarcon could not muster the 10 votes needed to overturn the vote and the council unanimously allowed the project to go forward. In late September, a Superior Court judge found fault with the procedure the City Council followed in approving the project, siding with the opposition a small organization funded by special interests. The judge directed the council to vote again, yet some members in key positions have refused to put the matter on an agenda, leaving this expansion in limbo.

The delay in construction is costing non-profit Providence Holy Cross millions of dollars, idling nearly 200 construction workers, postponing 250 new hospital jobs and, most importantly, threatening lives.

As Councilman Greig Smith, one of our strong supporters on the council, said, “It is unconscionable to delay the expansion of Providence Holy Cross Medical Center because of politics.”

Providence Holy Cross is frequently at capacity and patients often are held in the Emergency Department awaiting beds. With the closures of two nearby hospitals and the downsizing of a third, this area has lost more than 400 beds. The Providence Holy Cross expansion not only will help ease that deficit, it will ensure more beds are available in the event of a disaster.

In 2004, Councilman Alarcon, reacting to the pending closure of Northridge Medical Center’s Sherman Way campus, said: “Some people will die with each and every loss of a medical care facility within our community.”

We urge Councilman Alarcon to rethink his opposition and work with Providence Holy Cross to get this project a jewel in his own district reapproved as soon as possible.

In the past year, some 65,000 patients have been treated by our emergency team, including 17 victims who were rushed here from the Sept. 12 Metrolink collision. Weeks later, scores of patients who were injured or sickened in the brush fires that ravaged the northern San Fernando Valley were treated at Providence Holy Cross.

The expansion of Providence Holy Cross has immense support from the community, its employees, and former and current patients; however, minority interests unrelated to health care or the environment have blocked even discussion of our expansion by the council or its committees. This delay will only exacerbate the current health care crisis in Los Angeles County, where 16 hospitals have closed since 2000 and more are teetering on the brink of closure, threatening to further fray an already fragile safety net.

Nevertheless, we are committed to getting this expansion built because we owe it to the sick, the traumatically injured, the mothers-to-be and to the most vulnerable, those premature newborns whose lives will depend on the planned NICU. Providence Holy Cross takes its role in the community seriously not only is the medical center ranked among the best in the nation, Providence Holy Cross donated $20 million in proceeds to the Valley last year in the form of free health care programs and other services for the poor and the elderly.

The vote to reaffirm its approval has been in the City Council’s hands for more than two months since the court’s ruling in late September. It is not an issue for the courts to decide it is the council’s. Lives count on fair and thoughtful decisions made free from politics.

We ask the City Council to reconsider this situation and plan in January to reaffirm its approval of the Providence Holy Cross Medical Center expansion.

Kerry Carmody is chief executive of Providence Holy Cross Medical Center.