Medical center restates vow to move patients
By Thomas Peele - TIMES STAFF WRITER
SAN LEANDRO - Alameda County Medical Center officials pulled immediate plans to move 10 critically ill patients from an acute-care nursing home unit here, but said they will begin the process anew.
An attorney for the patients said she intends to keep fighting the move from the county's Fairmont Hospital Campus because moving the patients could cause them grave harm.
Medical center spokeswoman Jenny Alexich said plans announced last month to move the patients were scrapped, but plans will still be considered once the center staff finds beds for affected patients in private, acute-care facilities.
"We don't have appropriate placement at this time," Alexich said.
Kathryn Ann Stebner, a San Francisco attorney representing the patients and their families, said she would continue to fight future transfer plans. Stebner believes the county failed to follow state law the first time.
"They can do it-but they have to do it in a legal way," Stebner said.
For that to happen, the county must close its entire 109-bed skilled nursing facility at Fairmont, not just the acute care unit for patients in comas or with severe brain damage, Stebner said. "They can't just close a unit."
County officials planned to move some of the patients to the nearby Seaton Rehabilitation Hospital. A federal grand jury indicted its owner, Guy Roland Seaton, on charges of Medicaid fraud May 8.
Alexich said the indictment caused the county to cancel those plans, but Stebner believes the county decided against them before the indictment because of pressure placed on the medical center by her and by the California Advocates for Nursing Home reform.
The advocates organized two protests at the Fairmont campus last month.
Originally, the county planned to move 16 patients. One has died and another transferred. The families of four others agreed to transfers, Stebner said.
County officials say they need to close the unit because of a cut in state MediCal payments to the acute care unit.
Alexich said the reimbursement would be cut to $245 a day from more than $540 a day under confidential contracts based on each patient's needs.
The patients require long-term care and, in some cases, machines to help them eat and breathe. One patient has been there more than 24 years.
Published Wednesday, May 23, 2001, in the Contra Costa Newspapers
