University officials have announced that they will preserve a handful of services at UCSD’s Hillcrest Medical Center following a strong public outcry protesting the campus’s original plans to eliminate the hospital’s acute- and trauma-care services.
The campus had originally planned to transfer all of Hillcrest’s acute-care and trauma services to its newer La Jolla site at Thornton Hospital beginning in 2014. Officials were going to then shrink services at Hillcrest, such as outpatient treatment and urgent care, until 2030.
Now, UCSD will shift a smaller number of acute-care beds from Hillcrest to Thornton Hospital by 2014, but plans to maintain operation of Hillcrest’s trauma center past 2030.
Officials said the change in plans comes in response to a citywide push against the university’s original proposal, which protestors said would have put undue pressure on hospitals surrounding the Hillcrest site.
Hospitals like Hillcrest regularly serve under- and uninsured patients, according to County Supervisor Greg Cox.
‘[We insist] on the effort to hold UCSD accountable to working with all of us to come up with a solution: One that maintains good access for families in disadvantaged areas of the county,’ Cox said at a March meeting of county supervisors, who unanimously approved a resolution against UCSD’s original plans. ‘And [one] that does not put further stress on an extremely fragile system of hospital care.’
Supervisors were backed by a host of community members and health care administrators, who said the original relocation proposal would have severely damaged the quality of hospitals south of Interstate 8 – where most of city’s underprivileged seek care.
UCSD Health Science Communications Director Leslie J. Franz said last fall that upgrading Thornton Hospital and downsizing Hillcrest services would be more cost-effective than duplicating services at both sites.
The Hillcrest location was ‘aging,’ she said, and plans to upgrade health care services at Thornton Hospital would more than make up for any quality reduction at the Hillcrest site.
Those upgrades are progressing this week, with the UC Board of Regents set on approving a $12-million plan to build a bed tower at Thornton Hospital. The building extension, which would provide 125 to 150 inpatient beds, will cost about $350 to 450 million in total; gifts, hospital reserves and external investments will finance the project.
The board usually accepts recommendations from its committees, one of which approved UCSD’s initial construction phase earlier this week.
The university is still moving forward with its upgrades at Thornton Hospital – what has changed now, Franz said, is the university’s commitment to Hillcrest’s inpatient services past 2030.
‘We were always committed to running two hospitals until that date,’ Franz said. ‘[But] it had become clear to the leadership over time that there was a lot of anxiety in the community over our relocation plans.’
That ‘anxiety’ was made even more apparent last fall when Paradise Valley Hospital in National City announced plans to become for-profit, Franz said.
The loss of that hospital will put further weight on the city’s ‘safety net’ of hospitals that serve poor patients, yet another reason why UCSD is set on preserving services at Hillcrest, Franz said.
