Pacific Alliance Medical Center in Los Angeles, which provided care for more than 150 years, closed Nov. 30.
The hospital, which was originally slated to close Dec. 11, cited the costs of retrofitting its facilities to meet California’s seismic standards as the reason for the closure. The hospital said it lacked a financially responsible way to make the required updates.
“PAMC does not own the land on which our hospital sits, and the owner is unwilling to sell the land to us,” the hospital said in a statement to Becker’s Hospital Review in October. “The hospital building does not meet current California seismic standards, and it is not economically viable for us to invest nearly $100 million to build a hospital on land that we would not own.”
A California Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice dated Oct. 9 indicated all 638 of the hospital’s employees would be laid off when the hospital shut down. The hospital confirmed that number in its closure announcement.
In addition to the challenges related to the seismic requirements, Pacific Alliance Medical Center faced a few other major hurdles in the months leading up to its closure. In June, the hospital and its parent company agreed to pay $42 million to resolve allegations they violated the False Claims Act, Anti-Kickback Statute and Stark Law. The companies allegedly had improper financial relationships with certain physicians and billed Medicare and California’s Medicaid program for services provided to patients referred to Pacific Alliance Medical Center. In August, the hospital announced it was recovering from a ransomware attack that compromised the protected health information of 266,123 patients.
HENRY KOTULA 