When it comes to health care, progress is the undeniable Lucifer. He’ll candycoat models of efficiency and capital around a sour core, and enterprising minds will come running. Those minds are heading a plan to shift inpatient beds from UCSD’s Hillcrest Medical Center — historically a lynchpin in San Diego’s “safety net” system for poorer, indigent patients — to La Jolla’s Thornton Hospital, a move that could break the pressure cooker that is the health care system south of Interstate 8.

On paper, there is reason for joy. The county has recently blessed UCSD’s proposal through a 230-page study that found the move to have minimal impact on San Diego hospitals. Eighty-six percent of the Hillcrest center’s cases, the authors reasoned, are outpatients, so the exchange of extensive Thornton care for reduced Hillcrest services would be beneficial.

But the report severely misrepresents those potentially affected by the 385-bed loss at Hillcrest. The authors cite concerns of “inconvenience,” and sing terms like “access gaps” and “access challenges.” But euphemisms can’t cloak a simple fact: The plan will hurt some patients unlikely to have transportation. After a closer look, some of the report’s numbers are actually alarming. For example, by the time UCSD closes all of its acute-care beds at Hillcrest, hospitals in San Diego’s central, east and south districts will be over full capacity.

The beefier version of Thornton Hospital will no doubt be UCSD health care’s new pride: a highly functional, state-of-the-art giant of local medical care. Still, nothing can obscure the importance of public service and the potential lives that hang in the balance.