Medical Center to Drop Radio Advisories : Service to Paramedics Is Casualty of UCI Hospital’s Budget Ax

Budget problems at UCI Medical Center are forcing the hospital to drop its radio advisory station for paramedics--one of the six stations now operated by Orange County hospitals--a county Health Care Agency official said Friday.

Robert Love, interim director of the Health Care Agency, said he had been notified Friday by medical center officials that the hospital no longer could afford to support the station, which keeps doctors and nurses available 24 hours a day to respond to radio calls from paramedics at accident scenes.

In typical cases, paramedics radio in a patient’s condition to a nearby hospital’s advisory station and doctors radio back instructions.

Annual Cost $250,000

Love said the medical center will drop its radio service at the end of March. “They said it’s costing the medical center about $250,000” a year, he said. “That cost is about what other hospitals estimate, and we can appreciate the problem the medical center has because of its budget.”

Love said that while loss of the station is a blow to the county, it is not a crisis. He said the five radio-advisory stations at other hospitals in the county will be able to fill in the gaps.

“That is not to say we won’t miss the fine service that’s been provided by the medical center,” Love added. “They’ve been very important to us. We simply understand their budget problem, and we in the county are trying to cooperate in every way to help them.”

Love said cooperation will include talks about the county’s reimbursement to the medical center for care of poor patients.

Inadequate Reimbursement

Jack Peltason, chancellor of UC Irvine, has said that the major reason the medical center is facing up to a $9-million deficit this fiscal year is because the center cares for many poor patients and government reimbursement is inadequate. Seventy percent of the medical center’s patients are either indigent or are financed by Medi-Cal or Medicare.

Love alluded to the fact that in years past there have been strained relations between the county and the medical center over reimbursement for patients. “We’re having excellent cooperation (with county and medical center officials) now,” he said. “It’s a whole new situation, and we’re trying to help the medical center every way we can.”

The medical center, in an effort to cut down on its deficit, announced earlier this week that it will be laying off 104 staff workers effective March 15. The announcement brought forth angry reactions from nurses’ and other worker unions. A nurses’ association spokeswoman charged that the layoffs would result in seriously diminished health care for poor patients.