Officials at a San Fernando Valley hospital urged the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday to allow construction to resume on a $180-million expansion, saying the project is caught in a legal and political quagmire that is putting emergency care and jobs at risk.
Critics of the project, which include the Service Employees International Union and a handful of neighborhood groups in Mission Hills, contended that the hospital had failed to fully address traffic, parking, safety and environmental concerns.
A judge last month ordered Providence Holy Cross Medical Center to halt work on a four-story patient care wing until the council reexamines the expansion and decides whether more environmental review is needed.
At a news conference Tuesday, hospital officials said the closure of 11 emergency rooms throughout Los Angeles County since 2002 -- including the loss of more than 400 hospital beds in the Valley -- was straining their ability to respond in a crisis.
The number of patients passing through Providence Holy Cross' emergency room each year has increased from about 29,000 to about 65,000, ER Director Kelly Kurcz said.
The hospital treated 17 passengers in the Sept. 12 Metrolink crash, which killed 25 people. Seventeen more patients were treated for injuries and illnesses from last month's wildfires. But on Tuesday, Kurcz said 23 of the hospital's 31 emergency room beds were already occupied.
"God forbid, if today was the Metrolink day, we wouldn't be able to do that," she said.
Already, the hospital is regularly turning away ambulances, she said. Although there are other hospitals that can receive the patients, she said the time it takes to reach an emergency room can be critical.
"It's really about saving people's lives, because time is life," Kurcz said.
The new wing would add 101 beds to the 250-inpatient facility, roughly half of them for emergency patients. At a time of deepening unemployment, the project would also create 250 permanent jobs and put back to work the 150 construction workers sent home since the court order was issued, said Kerry Carmody, the hospital's chief executive.
He said the building was about 20% complete and put the cost of the construction delay at about $250,000 a month.
Attorney Ted Franklin, who represents the project's opponents, accused planners of failing to provide sufficient parking for the new wing, failing to address the likely increase in traffic and failing to complete a full analysis of the greenhouse gas emissions that would result from the expansion -- contentions disputed by Carmody.
