Los Angeles County ED Could Close

CAL/AAEM News Service calaaem_news at yahoo.com
Fri Sep 15 22:01:51 PDT 2006


Los Angeles County ED Could Close
 
Source: California Healthline
Date: September 5, 2006 
  

Centinela Freeman HealthSystem is expected to decide within about a month whether to
close the emergency department at its Memorial hospital in Inglewood, the Los Angeles
Times reports. 

Centinela Freeman officials said they are considering a plan that would shift patients
seeking emergency care at the Memorial hospital to the hospital system's Centinela campus
about 1.5 miles away. If the plan is approved, the health system would add two new
urgent-care centers at Memorial and Centinela with extended hours to increase patients'
access to primary and urgent care.

According to a study by the consulting firm Camden Group conducted to determine the
impact of the ED closing, nearly two-thirds of ED patients at Memorial and Centinela
received treatment for nonemergency and non-life-threatening conditions, hospital system
officials said.

Carol Meyer, director of the county Emergency Medical Services Agency, said that nine EDs
have closed in recent years in Los Angeles County and that Memorial's would "be the
biggest one yet."

Memorial's ED must remain open until mid-December under an agreement between the state
attorney general and Tenet Healthcare, which purchased the hospital in 2001 then sold it
in 2004 (Ornstein, Los Angeles Times, 8/28).  


For more information, please visit: 
http://www.californiahealthline.org/index.cfm?action=dspItem&itemID=124694&changedID=124619




Cyrus Shahpar & Brian Potts 
Managing Editors, CAL/AAEM News Service
University of California, Irvine

The CAL/AAEM Archives are available at: http://maillists.uci.edu/mailman/public/calaaem/


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