Financially troubled Century City Doctors Hospital gave up hope of finding a buyer and began shutting down Friday, according to hospital executives. Officially, the facility said it would cease operations late next week.
The hospital's emergency room -- a key element of the county's increasingly fragile emergency safety net -- will be closed today, and about 30 remaining patients will be discharged or transferred to nearby facilities beginning this weekend.
Regionally, 14 emergency rooms have been closed in the last five years, including 10 in Los Angeles County. After the closure, there will be 74 ERs remaining in the county.
On Friday, the hospital filed for financial liquidation under Chapter 7 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. Employees said they didn't get paid this week; other employees said payroll checks they received had bounced.
Hospital executives said they were petitioning the federal Bankruptcy Court to use emergency funds to pay employees as early as next week but acknowledged that they might not be able to do so.
"I haven't been paid in two weeks and I'm afraid I'm just not going to get paid," Tamara Tobin, a nursing assistant, said as she arrived at the hospital Friday.
The 176-bed facility, on Century Park East in the Century City Medical Plaza, has tried for months to improve its finances but has struggled to pay its growing debt, which the hospital estimated in a recent interview with The Times at more $60 million.
"It's really unfortunate" the hospital is closing, said Pat Wolfram, its interim chief executive. "Even this morning, we were trying to get a buyer and remain open but it just didn't happen. This is a great hospital and it's very sad."
Carol Meyer, director of governmental affairs at the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, said the loss of the hospital's emergency room in particular would be a particularly difficult blow to the region's healthcare system.
"This means more than 1,000 emergency patients a month will now have to be treated elsewhere," she said. "Right now, every loss of an ER is a major loss to our whole system."
Meyer said the county began informing local emergency agencies including the Los Angeles Fire Department that Century City's ER was shutting down immediately.
Until recently, Century City Doctors Hospital's financial prospects appeared to be good. The hospital, previously known as Century City Hospital, was closed in April 2004 by Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare Corp.
