REMEDY EYED FOR HOSPITAL.

Byline: Jesse Hiestand Daily News Staff Writer

On the heels of a grand jury report detailing the deterioration of Ventura County Medical Center's buildings, county officials said Wednesday they are on the verge of solving the most immediate problems.

After months of investigation, the 1996-97 grand jury said VCMC facilities are in a ``deplorable state'' and suggested the county act quickly to fix the problems because a hospital closure would prove very costly in the long run.

``In short, over half the buildings are being, or should be, abandoned, demolished and replaced with modern, code-compliant, structures,'' the report concludes.

Pierre Durand, director of the county Health Care Agency, said Wednesday that he believed the county is close to getting the kitchen and hospital laboratory replaced.

The kitchen and laboratory at the 75-year-old hospital are in such disrepair that the state Department of Health is conducting quarterly inspections and could effectively shut the hospital down at any time, he said.

``For licensing purposes, we must have the lab and kitchen,'' he said. ``At any time (state officials) can find that it's no longer suitable and they can close us in a week.''

Durand said the likely solution would be a partnership between the county hospital and the parent company of a private hospital, a move that could make more money, space and other resources available to the county hospital.

Durand declined to give further details, saying that could jeopardize several months of negotiations.

Supervisor Frank Schillo said that it was his understanding that Durand was in negotiations to merge the county hospital with St. John's Regional Medical Center in Oxnard or Los Robles Regional Medical Center in Thousand Oaks.

The county medical center acts as a health safety net for thousands of residents who are poor, have no health insurance or for other reasons cannot get care at the seven private hospitals in the county.

If the hospital closes, the county would lose $14 million in federal and state reimbursements each year and yet still be required by law to provide a health safety net, most likely by contracting with private hospitals, officials said.

A plan to construct a new building for the lab, kitchen and several nearby county clinics was shot down in March 1996 when voters rejected a $51 million bond to finance it.

A pared-down, $20 million version of this plan failed later that year when Community Memorial Hospital and others waged an expensive campaign against the county's hospital plans.

But the grand jury concluded the Board of Supervisors and other county officials were to blame for the failure of the hospital repair plan because they did not ``clearly and simply state their plans'' to the public.

``With hindsight, the board should have been speaking out more,'' Schillo said.

Board chair John K. Flynn said that he doesn't think the grand jury's criticism of the failed expansion of the hospital was fair.

``We explained it over and over and over again. It's just a complicated thing to explain,'' he said.

According to the grand jury, of the 30 buildings on the VCMC grounds, six are abandoned due to asbestos and lead contamination. Those are currently being demolished.

Six other buildings are portable/modular units, only one of which is up to code.

The laboratory is so small that staff are forced to work in closets, amid stacks of records. Rain leaks through the roof and walls.

Grand jurors found the kitchen's floor is so degraded from hot water and steam machines in tunnels below it that ``it no longer has any significant supporting capacity and is shored up with wooden posts in the underlying tunnels.''

Other buildings such as the Bard Building, used by the county Health Care Agency, need work too. ``The building is badly contaminated with asbestos and lead and is occasionally evacuated when the asbestos is disturbed.''