The sudden decision to divert some emergency patients away from Community Medical Center Long Beach may have violated a state law requiring 90 days’ notification of such developments, state health officials said.

The California Department of Public Health sent notice and a citation to the hospital of the potential violation, the agency said in a statement.

The agency’s statement refers to a state law requiring hospitals to provide 90 days’ notice before reducing or shutting down emergency medical services. Despite their contention that recent developments at Community Medical were out of order, state health officials said the agency could not take further action to force the hospital to restore its previous scope of emergency room services.

At issue is a recent order from the Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency, or LACEMS, requiring paramedics to take patients who need advanced life support services to emergency rooms other than the one at Community Medical. Long Beach officials last week complained that the “astounding” decision did not provide the fire department enough time to plan for the change.

Community Medical Center Chief Executive John Bishop said officials working for the local EMS agency, as opposed to hospital administrators, made the final decision to send patients receiving advanced paramedic care away from Community Medical. The diversions have now been happening for about a week.

“LACEMS evaluated the circumstances at Community and, in the interest of ensuring optimum patient safety and minimizing disruption to the emergency medical services transport system, LACEMS made the decision to place Community Medical Center Long Beach’s emergency department on extended ALS ambulance transport diversion,” Bishop said in a statement.

Public Health officials, however, say the EMS agency granted approval to a decision made by hospital leaders.

A representative of the EMS agency could not be reached for comment Friday.

ALS services can include cardiac monitoring, the administration of an IV line or defibrillation, among other services, according to the Long Beach Fire Department. Basic life support services include CPR or treating an injury with bandages or a splint.

Before the order to divert ALS patients to other facilities, Community Medical accepted about six ALS patients per day, compared with about eight BLS patients per day, according to MemorialCare. City data shows Long Beach paramedics carried nearly 5,000 total patients during the 12-month period ending Oct. 31 to the hospital.

Nurses assemble support for Community Medical

The state agency’s confirmation of this citation came on the same day the California Nurses Association hosted a press conference to protest recent decisions to close Community Medical and, more recently, the diversions of certain emergency patients.

The nurses union has disputed hospital managers’ position that the quicker closure timeline is due to Community Medical employees’ decision to seek other jobs following management’s November’s announcement that the East Long Beach hospital cannot feasibly be retrofitted to meet state seismic standards or to close as an acute care hospital.

MemorialCare Health System, a nonprofit that runs several other Long Beach and Orange County hospitals, has leased Community Medical Center from city government since 2011. Several city officeholders, Mayor Robert Garcia and councilmen Rex Richardson, Daryl Supernaw and Roberto Uranga, allied themselves with nurses union members and other local elected officials during Friday’s media conference.

Community Medical has a mid-2019 deadline to meet earthquake safety standards. Other medical services, such as psychiatric care, could still be provided at the Community Medical campus after the deadline. In mid-February, however, Garcia, Supernaw and City Manager Pat West sent a letter to MemorialCare declining the suggestion to convert Community Medical into a psychiatric hospital.

City officials and others objecting to closure plans have said Community Medical’s emergency room must be preserved. City Hall is seeking another company willing to take a chance on operating Community Medical Center.

Besides elected officials, speakers at Friday’s press conference included Jimmy Eleopoulos, a man who said paramedics took his brother to Community Medical while he was in need of life-saving care after a cardiac emergency on March 5.

“He was brought here to the hospital where they revived him not once, but twice right in there, by the great people here, and I thank them. I thank them, from the bottom of my heart,” Eleopoulos said.

Eleopoulos went on to say that he later learned that Long Beach Medical Center and Dignity Health St. Mary Medical Center could not have accepted his brother on the night of March 5. Thus if Community Medical had not been open, Eleopoulos’ brother may have risked a long ambulance ride.

“If my brother was to be taken, literally from 10 blocks away to another hospital .. out of the city, he might not have made it, and that’s very, very disturbing,” Eleopoulos said.

Garcia said during Friday’s press conference that it’s been disappointing to witness the demise of the hospital.

“We understand that there are seismic issues, but we really were hopeful that there would be more of a partnership during this time,” he said. “It is not acceptable to the city of Long Beach to have been given little to no notice to go from the expected closure to then, the immediate diversion of emergency services.”