New nursing law to hit hospitals at start of flu season.

THE height of this year's severe flu season could well hit L.A. by New Year's but it looks like local hospitals won't be getting any of the relief they had sought from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to deal with it.

The governor's office announced last week it would not delay implementation of a new nurse staffing law on Jan. 1, despite claims by hospitals that they do not have enough nurses--as well as concerns that the regulation will take effect during what is shaping up to be the nation's worst flu season in a decade.

"We know that by Christmas and New Year's we will be overwhelmed, but we will just have to continue to keep the doors open and treating people," said Jim Lott, executive vice president of the Healthcare Association of Southern California.

The new staffing law requires hospitals to have a specific number of nurses on duty in various wards, including one nurse for every four, non-critical emergency room patients. Citing an ongoing nursing shortage, the industry has been pushing the governor to relax various specific provisions of the regulation, or possibly delay implementation while their concerns are studied.

But the governor's office announced that the regulation would not be pulled back because it had otherwise cleared the administrative rule-making process.

A spokesman for the governor's office, Vince Sollitto, left open the possibility that the regulation could be changed in the future by the state Department of Health Services as part of a larger review of state regulations ordered by the governor. "Should any agency wish to modify any regulation they have the ability to do that," he said.

The law requires hospitals to close down beds if there are not enough nurses to meet staffing ratios. But Lott said he suspects many hospitals will be forced to violate the law during the flu season since many health care workers will be sick too. "There are so many extenuating circumstances," he said.

Already, hospitals in western San Bernardino and Riverside counties are seeing three times the normal flow of patients in their emergency rooms, while hospitals in the Central and Northern California have been hit too, Lott said.

While there ate 36,000 deaths nationwide and 1,000 in Los Angeles County annually due to the flu, this year has been noteworthy because it has hit children hard. Normally, the elderly and those with chronic conditions ate most at risk.

Locally, the county health department is investigating the death of a child who had the flu, but Dr. Jonathan Fielding, the county's director of public health, said it was not clear if the flu was the cause.

"Obviously it's scary and we do seem to have a heavier involvement of children, but every year about 1,000 people die of the flu (in the county)," he said.

Chuck Idelson, a spokesman for the California Nurses Association, which sponsored the nurse staffing law, said he was not convinced that hospitals could not treat flu patients while also meeting the new staffing law.

Staff reporter Laurence Darmiento can be reached at [phone] ext. 237 or at [e-mail].