Photo by Post contributor Thomas Cordova.

The Long Beach City Council will be considering a new operator for Community Hospital during next Tuesday’s council meeting, just weeks before its scheduled closure following the discovery of an active fault line on the property late last year.

After a search for potential operators, the city has selected Molina, Wu, Network, LLC with which to engage in exclusive negotiations, pending city council approval, city officials announced Friday morning.

MemorialCare has been the operator of Community Hospital since 2011 when it was on the verge of closure due to financial challenges. However, seismic studies revealed that MemorialCare could no longer operate the medical center as an acute care hospital due to the discovery of a large fault zone underlying the majority of the campus which could not be financially mitigated, according to the hospital’s CEO John Bishop.

“We were honored to learn today of the City of Long Beach’s preference for our proposal to continue operations at Community Hospital,” said John Molina, who is part of Molina, Wu, Network, LLC. and was chief financial officer of Molina Healthcare until last May.

Molina called the East Long Beach hospital an “essential part of the healthcare safety net in Los Angeles County” and said the network is committed to doing whatever it can to prevent the hospital’s scheduled closure.

“Community Hospital has been an incredibly important asset to residents for over 100 years,” Mayor Garcia said in a statement. “We are absolutely thrilled to have a partner with the experience of MWN to work with the City to ensure a life-saving hospital in East Long Beach. A smooth transition and keeping the hospital open during this handoff is now up to MemorialCare.”

The hospital, located 1720 Termino Avenue,has been operating as a 158-licensed bed, general acute care and psychiatric care facility, meaning that it provides 24-hour inpatient care and services like medical, nursing, surgical, anesthesia, laboratory, radiology, pharmacy and dietary services.

Hospital officials previously expressed willingness with the city—which owns the land and the building—to convert the hospital to a behavioral health or acute psychiatric care facility, which would not be subject to more stringent seismic standards, according to Bishop, but the city declined that proposal.

In a phone interview with the Post Friday morning, Bishop criticized the city’s decision to change operators and keep the hospital open.

“We think it’s irresponsible to continue knowingly not being in compliance with current seismic code and they won’t even address any of the safety concerns,” Bishop said.

However, Molina told the Post that, along with working with a team to keep the hospital’s critical services in place, the network is confident it has assembled a “strong, viable proposal, which will alleviate seismic safety, while being a financially-sustainable plan.”

The hospital is still scheduled to close July 3, Bishop said. Currently all contracts with service providers have been canceled and the majority of employees have either already left or will be beginning new jobs in early July. Additionally, the number of patients still in the hospital is in the low 20s.

https://lbpost.com/life/health/community-hospital-employees-receive-official-layoff-notices-two-months-before-sites-closure/

“These processes are operationally irreversible at this late date, and the hospital remains on schedule to close no later than July 3, 2018, with arrangements in place for the safe transfer of any then-remaining inpatients to other care facilities,” Bishop said in a letter dated today to Mayor Robert Garcia, City Manager Patrick West, 4th District Councilman Daryl Supernaw and Economic Development Director John Keisler.

While the city and MWN are depending on MemorialCare to be a part of the transition process to keep the hospital open, Bishop said in his letter that as owners of the property and building, it is the city’s responsibility to take over such matters:

“We want to be clear that any negotiations concerning the operation of the hospital after its closure on July 3, 2018 are between the City and its prospective operator.With the land and building owned by the City, MemorialCare is not and will not be a party for the City to complete a transaction with another operator. The fact is that the City and the prospective operator, without any involvement of MemorialCare, have the ability to negotiate a transaction and seek all necessary regulatory approvals to reopen the hospital under the new operator. The City and the prospective operator can also seek any desired legislative changes to ease or extend the time period for compliance with the applicable seismic requirements (although in our view, a legislative extension of the period for compliance would be irresponsible when a facility is located on top of an active earthquake fault).”

The City Council is scheduled to discuss the issue Tuesday, June 19 at 5:00PM at the Council Chamber located at 333 West Ocean Boulevard.