Cost of seismic regulations leaves California hospitals shaking

Doctors fear hospital closures and access-to-care problems because of a mandate to retrofit buildings.

By Katherine Vogt, AMNews staff. April 12, 2004.

Seismic regulations requiring California hospitals to conduct billions of dollars' worth of rebuilding, remodeling and retrofitting have shaken the state's health care industry to its foundation.

Doctors and hospital leaders say a health care crisis is brewing in California as hospitals struggle to find ways to meet a 2008 deadline to make facilities strong enough to withstand a major earthquake without collapsing, raising fears that hospitals will be forced to close, and access to care will suffer.

Already, Tenet Healthcare announced in January that it would sell 19 hospitals in California, largely because of the cost of meeting the seismic regulations. Tenet estimated that it would have to pay $1.6 billion for the work on just those facilities.

Physicians such as Marcy Zwelling-Aamot, MD, worry that there won't be enough buyers to take over all of the Tenet hospitals for sale. She also is concerned that other hospitals will be forced to follow Tenet's lead or just plain shut down because of the seismic regulations.

"There are some hospitals that we think will be basically trashed to the ground," said Dr. Zwelling-Aamot, an internist and critical care specialist and president of the Los Angeles County Medical Assn. "They just can't afford it. We have to remember that hospitals are a business. When the costs overwhelm the profit margin, they've got to go under."

The regulations were created with a 1994 law that was passed after the Northridge earthquake in the Los Angeles area. No hospitals collapsed during the quake, but 23 hospitals were taken out of service because their operating systems failed.