Local hospitals and groups are protesting plans to shrink services at Hillcrest Medical Center while expanding those at La Jolla’s Thornton Hospital, following the release of a countywide study that said the shift would not significantly impact San Diego healthcare.
A county study states that reduced patient services at Hillcrest Medical Center will not affect the poor, though critics remain skeptical.
The plan to move all Hillcrest inpatient beds and its trauma center, scheduled to take place gradually over 25 years, to Thornton Hospital will not impact county hospitals as a whole, according to the study conducted by consulting firm the Abaris Group. However, critics of the plan say the relocation of 385 beds will put severe pressure on hospitals operating in the “safety net” area, which serves most of San Diego’s poor and uninsured.
“We fully expect that once the UCSD Hillcrest Medical Center is gone as a full-service hospital, other hospitals in the area will see a gigantic influx in patients,” said Don Stanziano, a spokesman for Hillcrest’s Scripps Mercy Hospital. “We don’t have the capacity to be the only hospital in the area. To us, it’s a hostile closure.”
Serving uninsured patients, Stanziano said, has already presented revenue problems. The Scripps Mercy Hospital in Chula Vista lost $10 million last year and $14 million the year before because the majority of its patients are un- or underinsured.
The county-commissioned report found that over 57 percent of the 9,330 patients in Central and South San Diego are underinsured.
The report also found that hospitals across the county will be able to handle UCSD’s displacement of care, which includes the addition of almost 400 beds to Thornton Hospital.
“While there may be some patients/family member[s] and hospitals impacted, overall the impact is not expected to be significant,” the report stated.
However, the report found that the move would create “some access issues” and “inconvenience” for patients in poorer areas. Opponents of UCSD’s plan, which include the Mexican American Professional Business Association and Scripps Health Chief Medical Officer Brent Eastman, say that the report misjudged the effects of the change on low-income areas.
“Even though the closure of Hillcrest beds coincides with Thorton’s expansion, we’re talking about 9,000 patients here,” he said. “Where are these people going to go?”
Free transportation between the Hillcrest and campus medical centers will be able to move patients in central and southern regions, according to director of UCSD Health Science Communications Leslie J. Franz. She said critics have overestimated the impact of the university’s long-range plan.
“Much of the concern being expressed today is based on emotion,” Franz stated in an e-mail. “Understandable, but not a good basis for planning.”
The report also addressed possible conceptions of the change, and suggested that patients originally served in the Hillcrest area would be concerned “whether they [could] receive care elsewhere or not.”
To combat misconceptions about the plan, Franz said UCSD was forced to release a “myth versus fact” sheet.
In addition, upgrading the La Jolla site will be more cost effective than reproducing needed services at the Hillcrest location, which Franz called “aging” and in need of replacement by 2030.
“The best use of limited resources would be to expand the Thornton Hospital, which is newer and therefore constructed to support modern-day medicine,” Franz stated.
The report’s authors admitted that although the county would be able to sustain the transfer, “the emotional impact cannot be ignored.”
