San Pedro Peninsula Hospital

At least one person was killed and 11 others injured Saturday when two helicopters collided and crashed while attempting to land at the Catalina Air and Sea Terminal in San Pedro. Witnesses said one of the aircraft crashed on the helipad next to the terminal, which is under the Vincent Thomas suspension bridge, and the other plunged upside down into the San Pedro Channel near the Princess Louise floating restaurant.

A faction of the 350-member community corporation that owns San Pedro Peninsula Hospital has called for replacement of the governing board and a "public airing" of the severe financial problems that afflict the 64-year-old hospital. A petition presented to the hospital by the 22-member group, which calls itself the Committee to Save San Pedro Peninsula Hospital, calls for a corporation meeting April 18 to remove the 15 board members and elect a new slate.

San Pedro Peninsula Hospital, striving to overcome an estimated $9 million in losses in the last two years, has laid off 52 additional employees and reduced the work hours of 26 more in a move hospital officials said will save $1.2 million a year. Hospital President John Wilson said the action was a painful but necessary step for the financial security of the hospital, which is in the midst of a program to cut costs and promote certain services as recommended by the national accounting firm of Ernst & Whinney.

In another sign of the sweeping changes enveloping the South Bay medical world, Bay Harbor Hospital in Harbor City is studying whether to join forces with a nearby hospital. The board that oversees Bay Harbor Hospital voted last week to explore affiliating with Little Company of Mary Health Services, which operates hospitals in Torrance and San Pedro. Bay Harbor officials had already been talking with Little Company's chief competitor, Torrance Memorial Medical Center. No decision on any affiliation is expected before January, said Jack Weiblen, chief executive officer of Bay Harbor, a 362-bed nonprofit facility.

The 64-year-old San Pedro Peninsula Hospital is assessing its future after recording the first financial losses in its history during the last two years, technically defaulting on $18 million in bonds and forcing the resignation of its president, who had earlier called for personnel cuts and elimination of some hospital programs. According to hospital officials, San Pedro Peninsula, which opened in 1925 and is San Pedro's only hospital, lost $2.7 million in 1987.

Officials at San Pedro Peninsula Hospital are promising its upcoming alignment with Little Company of Mary Hospital in Torrance will mean better services, but the change has stirred concern among abortion rights advocates. The reason: Abortions and sterilizations will no longer be performed at the San Pedro facility after it becomes affiliated next month with Little Company of Mary, a Catholic hospital.

Breaking nearly a month of official silence, San Pedro Peninsula Hospital this week launched a campaign to block an attempt by dissident members of the hospital's parent corporation to replace the 15-member board. The hospital began its public defense with a press conference Monday, eight days before the special board election that was forced by the dissident group. "We are concerned about the takeover. We consider it a possibility," Dr. Larry Orosz said. "For the past month, the hostile group as been telling its side.

The financially ailing San Pedro Peninsula Hospital appears to be well on the way to healing itself. The community hospital was saddled with accumulated losses of $9 million earlier in the year, but is expected to end 1989 having cut that deficit to no more than $1.5 million. The year's budget was $95 million. The change in the financial picture has come about through a number of efforts: Employees were laid off.

When San Pedro Peninsula Hospital decided earlier this month to close down two medical services and sell another, it called the action the first step in restructuring the financially ailing community hospital to put it back on its feet. But the inclusion of the family practice residency program on the closure list has angered its director, Dr. Robert Avina, who called the move a devastating blow to the physicians in training and a disservice to more than 2,000 medically indigent patients who receive care in the program.

A Torrance jury has rejected a San Pedro nurse's claims that she suffered emotional distress from witnessing what she considered sexual harassment carried out by a prominent South Bay doctor. The decision came in a landmark "environmental sexual harassment" lawsuit in which the nurse sought damages as a witness to--not as the direct target of--sexual harassment in the workplace. Acting on a lawsuit filed by former surgical nurse Julie Fisher, the Torrance Superior Court jury decided that Dr.