PSYCHIATRIC UNIT MAY CLOSE PROGRAM ONE-OF-A-KIND FOR VALLEY TEENAGERS.

Byline: Jennifer Radcliffe Staff Writer

Northridge Hospital Medical Center officials said Monday they will close an adolescent psychiatric inpatient program - the only such program in the San Fernando Valley - to avoid being forced into treating Medi-Cal patients at heavy financial losses.

Hospital leaders fear the closure, set for April 30, will contribute to the collapse of the mental health system for area teenagers. They've asked county officials to step in and grant a waiver for the nonprofit program to stay open without taking Medi-Cal patients.

A Medi-Cal contract would flood the unit with patients for whom reimbursement rates fall short of the actual cost of treatment, the hospital medical director, Maurice Zeitlin, said.

Nearly 400 teens a year are served in Northridge's inpatient program, most of them covered by private insurance or Medicare.

``It's a horrible decision, and it's really a decision that we really have no choice about,'' hospital spokeswoman Teddi Grant said. ``We will not be able to keep a financial balance.''

Coupled with the closure last spring of Pine Grove Hospital, a psychiatric hospital for troubled adolescents in West Hills, the end of the Northridge Hospital unit would create a void in services for teens in the San Fernando, Antelope and Santa Clarita valleys, officials said.

``A waiver should be granted, and this should be negotiated through,'' said Jim Lott, spokesman for the Hospital Association of Southern California, an industry group. ``We can't afford to lose these services, especially in the Valley.''

The county Department of Mental Health director, Marvin Southard, said he hadn't received letters or phone calls that hospital officials said they made to try to discuss the issue, and he was surprised at the threat to close.

``The process of going about it in this way is somewhat disturbing. You think you'd talk before you'd threaten,'' he said.

The Northridge unit serves 13- to 18-year-olds with a variety of problems, including depression and mental illness. Under California's mental-health law, the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, an adolescent can be admitted by law enforcement officials, psychiatrists and parents if they believe the child is a danger to the self or others.

Under a Department of Mental Health policy change last year, if Northridge refuses to sign a Medi-Cal contract, it will lose its designation allowing short-term, involuntary treatment there, and it will be severely hampered in its ability to treat teens with the most severe problems.

In an April 2 letter to Southard, Zeitlin notes that the Northridge hospital cares for Medi-Cal and indigent psychiatric patients on an emergency basis and that the hospital also is a Medi-Cal provider for general acute patients. Hospital personnel would like to continue providing these services and keep the hospital's previous status under mental health law without having to become a longer-term psychiatric provider under Medi-Cal, he says.

Zeitlin said he fears a Medi-Cal contract could spell financial ruin for the hospital because the high cost of providing psychiatric care is not fully covered by the state program.

``It is completely impinging on the private treatment,'' he said. ``We need an equal playing field here.''

Southard said that some counties charge hospitals to use the state mental-health law's power, but Los Angeles County officials instead decided to ask hospitals with psychiatric units to make open beds available to Medi-Cal patients.

``All we want is to have the possibility of them accepting them,'' he said, adding that the closure threat may be a ``hardball business tactic.''

Camillia Johnson, director of the behavioral-health unit at Northridge Hospital, said she hopes county officials will rethink their decision.

``I don't really know if they understand this issue, but we can't run a program like this,'' she said.

Jennifer Radcliffe, [phone]

jennifer.radcliffe(at)dailynews.com

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Northridge Hospital Medical Center therapist Nancy Reynolds reviews records in a psychiatric inpatient program for teens.

Phil McCarten/Staff Photographer