LONG BEACH AREA — For 30 years, the tiny Avalon Municipal Hospital has been serving an island community whose numbers wax and wane.

As the only hospital on Santa Catalina Island, the facility buzzes during the summer tourist season when Avalon's population swells to more than 20,000. The rest of the year, most of the rooms are vacant as it serves the island's estimated 2,800 full-time residents.

Now, the hospital's future is in doubt. Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, which has operated the tiny hospital since 1984, is seriously considering pulling out when its contract expires in January.

The Avalon hospital is losing about $30,000 a month, said Frances Hanckel, Memorial's chief operating officer. "We simply can no longer afford the loss," Hanckel said.

Avalon officials say that the city, which owns the hospital, could not absorb the deficit.

"I consider this the most important issue facing Avalon," said Mayor Hugh (Bud) Smith. "If you don't have a hospital, you don't have anything."

The hospital is particularly important in the summer, he said, when its emergency room bustles with people injured while participating in water sports or hurt in crashes of the golf carts that tourists use to traverse the island.

During the rest of the year, the hospital provides basic medical services, treating minor injuries and illnesses or stabilizing seriously ill patients until they can be flown to the mainland.

The hospital has never made money, administrators say, and its losses have increased in recent years as costs skyrocketed and government reimbursements dwindled. One result is that the hospital has stopped doing major surgery or delivering babies.

The issue of finances first heated up about six months ago when hospital Administrator Lew Gillette resigned amid rumors of financial mismanagement.

Hanckel denies the rumors, but says that Gillette "was not the best manager" and that "none of us were disappointed when he left."

Gillette, 66, who retired in Banning, says he left primarily for health reasons.

"It wasn't a question of financial mismanagement," he said. "If the (money's) not there, it's not there. There was nothing I felt I could do beyond what I had done, and so I left."

Memorial replaced Gillette with Deborah Andersen, whose mission is to cut costs and improve efficiency, Hanckel said.