State rejects effort to keep Coalinga hospital open

Coalinga Regional Medical Center will close completely by June 30.

Plans to keep the rural hospital operating under new management fell apart this week when the board of directors were told the California Department of Public Health would not fast-track a reopening of the emergency room and of acute-care beds.

The board of directors voted Tuesday night to put the hospital into full closure mode, said CEO Wayne Allen.

The hospital closed its rural health clinic Wednesday, Allen said. About 40 residents remain in the hospital's skilled nursing facility and are being transferred to other nursing homes. About 70 employees are at the nursing home, Allen said. When the hospital was at full operation, it employed about 200 people.

The hospital had announced in May that it would be closing by June 15 because of financial losses of $4.5 million. On May 4, it closed the emergency room leaving the city of 16,658 without an emergency room for 40 miles. The hospital also had closed the laboratory, radiology department, pharmacy and 24-bed medical-surgical unit.

But the hospital board of directors had hoped to salvage the hospital, signing a contract May 24 to turn over operations to American Advanced Management Services of Modesto on June 1. The agreement, however, was predicated on the hospital receiving approval by the California Department of Public Health to reopen all operations. "The state did not approve the takeover," Allen said.

The Centralized Applications Unit at the California Department of Public Health determined that the hospital had completely closed as of May 1, which would require a consuming process to reopen, Allen said. The hospital does not have the money to stay closed and undergo that process , he said. "When you're faced with an unknown time frame which has been phrased as several weeks or several months, you're out business."

This story was originally published June 15, 2018 at 4:21 PM with the headline "State rejects effort to keep Coalinga hospital open."