ACTIVISTS FIGHT FOR TRANSITIONAL UNIT NEWHALL HOSPITAL MAY SHUT CARE CENTER.

Byline: Eugene Tong Staff writer

VALENCIA - Newhall Memorial Hospital is mulling plans to shut down its transitional care center to create more hospital beds to meet what officials believe is a growing need, a move that is drawing protests from local senior activists.

The 27-bed Transition Care Unit offers skilled nursing care to those who have been hospitalized but are not quite ready to go home.

Patients usually stay a week to two weeks, and are often the elderly who require extended in-patient care, said Dr. Gene Dorio of the Committee Against Closing the TCU, a newly formed group whose membership includes Brad Berens, executive director of the Santa Clarita Valley Committee on Aging. The group plans a rally Friday at the Santa Clarita Valley Senior Center to protest the possible change.

"The TCU functions as a step-down for seniors in the Santa Clarita Valley," Dorio said. "Once they complete their treatment at the hospital, they have the opportunity to go to the TCU as opposed to going home, especially when they haven't fully recovered."

But for hospital officials who are struggling to meet the demands of a projected growth in the senior population, converting the unit remains an attractive option.

Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital projects that by 2010, 8 percent of Santa Clarita Valley residents will be age 65 or older, compared with about 6.7 percent in 2005. That's also the age when hospitalization needs double - from 554 bed days per thousand people ages 55-64 to 1,130 bed days per thousand between 65-74.

"Because of the growing aging population - age drives hospital needs - we need more acute-care beds," Andie Bogdan, a hospital spokeswoman, said Monday. "Part of the solution may be to convert those lower level beds into a higher acuity of care."

Of the hospital's 217 beds, 131 are designated for acute care - inpatient surgery, observation and intensive care. They're 82 percent to 89 percent full on any given day, Bogdan said. Transitional care is usually 66 percent occupied.

The hospital two years ago converted 29 beds of the then 56-bed TCU for acute care. Officials were required to build a corridor connecting the existing acute-care unit with the Nursing Pavilion, Bogdan said.

Yet the transitional ward also includes five beds for hospice care - a last resort for those unable to afford home care, Dorio said.

"There will be no hospice care," he said. "We have patients who have unfortunately terminal diseases and they don't have anybody at home to take care of them."

For hospital president and chief executive officer Roger Seaver, a final decision to close the TCU depends on the hospital's financial and facility needs.

"The elderly population do need acute hospitals more than everybody else," he said. "We try to produce the demand we experience and will experience."

The hospital has plans to either convert or add 50 more acute-care rooms over the next five years and is in the midst of a $13.6 million emergency room expansion.

"But we don't have the ability in the short run to create new buildings," Seaver said.

And under current Medicare reimbursement rules, the per diem for skilled nursing - which transitional care falls under - does not cover the cost of care. Nor is it covered by insurance.

In contrast, acute care - often paid for through insurance - yields better reimbursement, Bogdan said.

[e-mail]

[phone]