Officials say Douglas community hospital set to close

A 25-bed hospital near the U.S.-Mexico border was expected to be closed this weekend after the federal government terminated the hospital’s Medicare funding over patient-safety concerns.

Cochise Regional Hospital in Douglas sought a temporary restraining order in U.S. District Court to halt Medicare’s decision to terminate payments following violations uncovered during repeated on-site inspections. But a federal judge rejected the request Thursday, and hospital officials said the facility would close Friday.

“They told me they were closing at 3 p.m. today (Friday),” said James Dickson, CEO of Copper Queen Community Hospital in nearby Bisbee. “We are accepting all of their patients, and we are happily able to handle it.”

Chicago-based People’s Choice Hospital Group, which manages Cochise Regional, notified officials that the hospital would close Friday. When reached by phone Friday afternoon, People’s Choice President Seth Guterman referred questions to an attorney, Harley Goldstein, who confirmed the hospital would close unless political leaders intervened to “convince the appropriate regulatory folks to change their minds.”

Copper Queen has a clinic in Douglas and will soon open an expanded “quick care” center in the border community, with radiology and laboratory services that will be capable of handling most patients who seek emergency-room care, Dickson said. People who need more-critical care will be transported by ambulance to the Bisbee hospital, located about 20 miles northwest, Dickson said.

Cochise County officials said they have instructed Guterman, a Chicago-area emergency-room doctor, that People’s Choice must remove any equipment, medicine and other material from the county-owned hospital building upon closing.

“We’re just disappointed that right now Douglas doesn’t have hospital emergency service in its own community,” said Britt Hansen, chief civil deputy in the Cochise County Attorney’s Office.

The Douglas hospital, previously known as Southeast Arizona Medical Center, has long been a fixture in the community of 20,000 and provided medical care for the U.S. Border Patrol and migrants. But the hospital also has been in bankruptcy twice, with the current owners buying the hospital out of bankruptcy in January 2014.

On July 10, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services terminated payments to Cochise Regional due to the hospital’s history of repeated violations of federal health and safety rules, Medicare officials said.

Inspectors found repeated examples of patient-safety concerns during four inspections, or surveys, that were completed at the hospital since February 2014.

During the most recent survey, on March 26, inspectors discovered that a patient with congestive heart failure and kidney disease was left unmonitored in the emergency department for 90 minutes as he waited for transportation to a dialysis center, court documents and a federal inspection report said.

When the man was transferred via van, he became unresponsive and was returned to the hospital’s emergency department with no pulse. He was placed on a ventilator and transported by medical helicopter to a Tucson hospital. He later died, documents show.

During a June 2014 survey, inspectors found that a patient with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis complained of shortness of breath, but nurses were unfamiliar with a ventilator and said it was missing a circuit or part to operate, according the court documents.

Other patients were unable to get doctor-ordered medications at the hospital. The hospital pharmacist told inspectors only he was allowed to take medication deliveries, but he was not always available to take those deliveries due to restrictions on his hours, according to court documents.

Medicare ruled that Cochise Regional no longer met the federal health program’s “condition of participation” because inspectors uncovered deficiencies that “are of such a character as to adversely affect patient health and safety.”

U.S. District Court Judge Cindy K. Jorgenson was not swayed by the hospital’s request to halt Medicare’s action, noting in her order that the hospital had more than one year to fix deficiencies and did not contest the action through an expedited appeal.