Community Medical Center Long Beach, dealing with an exodus of caregivers following its managers’ conclusion that the campus cannot be brought up to seismic safety standards, is now scheduled to close in four months.

MemorialCare Health System, the nonprofit hospital group that has managed the 158-bed Community Medical Center since 2011, confirmed the closure plans Monday morning.

The news comes about four months after MemorialCare announced management’s determination that the presence of an active fault line below the east Long Beach hospital made it practically impossible to retrofit the hospital to bring the campus in line with California’s earthquake safety law for hospitals.

An inability to upgrade the hospital would result in state law mandating that any acute-care hospital services at Community Medical cease after June 2019.

MemorialCare reported Monday that a wave of people leaving the hospital in pursuit of jobs holding the promise of longer-term employment security has made it increasingly difficult for management to properly run the hospital. In response, MemorialCare has told Community Hospital’s landlord, Long Beach city government, of plans to terminate their lease in 120 days.

“We’ve already lost a quarter of our employees,” said John Bishop, CEO of Community, Long Beach Memorial Medical Center and Miller Children’s and Women’s Hospital. “We will try to continue the status quo as long as possible. But we will continue to assess the situation, and cut back as necessary.”

At the peak of operation, Community had about 375 employees, Bishop said. More than 80 have resigned since November. About 100 will be going to other MemorialCare facilities, Bishop said, and those staying at Community until the closure will be receiving retention bonuses.

“It’s a very sad day,” Bishop said, declaring MemorialCare’s choice to move toward a closure of the 9X-year-old hospital was “one we have not taken lightly.”

Although Monday’s announcement means MemorialCare may pull out of the Community Medical site by early July, hope remains in other circles that some solution exists that will allow the east Long Beach hospital and its emergency room to remain open beyond that time, and even beyond the mid-2019 deadline created by California law.

“We are going to identify an operator to sustain services,” said Matthew Faulkner, executive director of the Community Hospital Long Beach Foundation.

Faulkner’s statements of confidence are not a new element in this story. Although the foundation has historically existed to raise money in support of the hospital, its stated mission since November has been to figure out some method of keeping an emergency room open in east Long Beach.

Although Faulkner acknowledged a long-term solution may require construction of a new hospital, the group’s short-term focus is preserving access to Community.

City government released a statement late Monday reporting officials are “actively engaged in discussions” with other hospital operators and working with Assemblyman Patrick O’Donnell, D-Long Beach, on a bill intended to keep Community Medical open beyond mid-2019.

Alternatives to closure?

A City Hall-commissioned peer review of the seismic studies affirmed the investigation that led MemorialCare leaders to decide Community Hospital cannot be brought up to standards by the mid-2019 deadline is the product of valid work.

City government has also, however, received word from the state agency in charge of regulating hospital construction that Community Medical buildings that would have to be decommissioned from hospital service in the present conditions could be reclassified at ratings that would allow them to remain open after mid-2019 following a successful retrofit.

Whether that can be done remains to be seen. A portion of the structures at Community Medical, including its original building, have ratings in the best and second-best categories of the state government’s five-level ratings system for grading hospitals in terms how well their structures may fare during an earthquake. Others at Community Medical, however, are in the worst classification.

Bishop has previously said the work necessary to transform Community Medical into a campus that could operate beyond mid-2019 would result in an unfeasible hospital with only 20 acute care beds.

Faulkner has not accepted that conclusion. One item on the Foundation’s to-do list for this week is to conduct an independent assessment of how much service capacity may exist within those Community Medical buildings that are already up to standards.

“Our numbers are going to look different from, maybe, what you’ve heard,” Faulkner predicted.

California law had previously required hospitals to meet seismic standards by 2008. Community Medical and other hospitals up and down the state have since obtained multiple extensions allowing them to stay open.

O’Donnell is now asking his Assembly colleagues to agree to a bill, A.B. 2591, that may grant a further extension to Community Medical. He criticized MemorialCare on Monday for announcing closure plans that may leave the campus unused, accusing MemorialCare of wanting to prevent any potential competition from showing up.

“Their shutting down just makes it that much more difficult, because there would be no continuity,” ODonnell said.

Bishop said Monday that MemorialCare was, despite closure plans, going through with the process of renewing Community Medical’s license.

In the meantime, MemorialCare has hired temporary help to fill medical staffing gaps, and Bishop acknowledged Community Medical could close before the 120-day period runs out if staffing falls below acceptable levels.

Emergency situation

Community Medical Center has been, on average, the third most-frequent destination for Long Beach Fire Department paramedics taking patients to emergency rooms.

In November, MemorialCare released study findings that included data showing that more than half of emergency room visits to hospitals in Long Beach, as well as Lakewood Regional Medical Center and Los Alamitos Medical Center, involved patients who could have their needs met at urgent care centers.

MemorialCare presently offers urgent-care services in east Long Beach at its Urgent Care Center in Los Altos, near the crossing of Stearns Street and Bellflower Boulevard. A future center is planned for the area near Second Street and Pacific Coast Highway in southeast Long Beach.

How many people take up MemorialCare’s advice is another unanswered question.

Patients who only need urgent care services don’t necessarily know that’s the case, said Jackie McKay, a 33-year Community Medical nurse.

“It’s really hard for a person on the street to know what they need,” she said.

MemorialCare is also counted on emergency room expansions at Long Beach Memorial as well as Dignity Health-St. Mary Medical Center and College College Medical Center.

Although current state law would prevent Community Medical center from remaining open beyond mid-2019 in its current condition, non-acute services could still be provided at the location. MemorialCare has suggested Community Medical could be converted into a facility meeting demand for behavioral health care, but city government has rejected that option.

Councilman Daryl Supernaw, whose district includes the Community Medical campus, said City Hall’s first goal remains the preservation of emergency and acute care.

“To go to Plan B, we’re way too premature for that,” he said.

—

Harry Saltzgaver contributed to this report.