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Hospital Earthquake Law Could See Changes Based on Risk

Some of Orange County’s hospitals may get more time to meet the state’s earthquake safety laws.

California’s Office of Statewide Hospital Planning and Development is considering a new way to assess hospital safety, one that looks at how close buildings are to a fault line, instead of just the age and condition of the buildings.

In short, hospitals farther away from fault lines could be given more time to comply with the state’s earthquake law.

Regulators still are working out which hospitals could get a reprieve to meet the law by 2030, said Patrick Sullivan, an agency spokesman.

Driving the change is a new way of measuring earthquake risk that uses computer software developed for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The measurement examines how a building is expected to do when an earthquake hits, factoring in ground motion, soil composition, distance from the quake’s epicenter and other considerations.

The Office of Statewide Hospital Planning and Development’s Hospital Building Safety Board recommended the new method during a hearing last month.


Hospitals Press On

Several Orange County hospitals are pressing ahead with plans to meet the law, passed 13 years ago. It requires major hospitals to be able to withstand a big quake by 2013. By 2030, they need to be able to keep operating after one.

“I know that I’m dealing with buildings that are near 50 years of age,” said Bruce Christian, chief executive of South Coast Medical Center in Laguna Beach. “It’s questionable as to whether or not the new process that is being considered will make a difference in the outcome. I’m taking the position that we’re going to have to replace them.”

South Coast Medical Center currently is classified at the highest risk for earthquake damage and in need of building replacement.

Laguna Beach is near the Newport-Inglewood-Rose Canyon fault line, which begins just south of Newport Bay and runs along the coastline into northern San Diego County.

South Coast, which has 208 beds, already has unveiled a plan to help pay its estimated $65 million earthquake bill. The plan centers on adding a patient building and using the old tower for services that don’t require retrofitting, such as skilled nursing and chemical dependency rehabilitation.

The plan also calls for a developer to build senior housing on an undeveloped portion of South Coast’s land to help pay $25 million of the bill. Fund raising and debt is planned for the rest, according to the hospital.

Seal Beach, Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa and Newport Beach, home to Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, also are near the Newport-Inglewood Fault.

Hoag, which has 409 beds, “is not on the fault, but it is very close,” said Langston Trigg, the hospital’s vice president for facilities, design and construction.

Because of the hospital’s proximity, officials “want to make sure that we do what we’re going to need to do to keep patients out of risk,” Trigg said.

Hoag’s Sue and Bill Gross Women’s Pavilion, which opened in 2005, is designed to be functional after a quake, Trigg said.

The Office of Statewide Hospital Planning and Development expects to prepare emergency regulations for approval by September in order to give hospitals clear guidance about what is going on.

If regulators sign off on the change, it could give hospitals more time to deal with what’s expected to be a hefty bill.

A January study from Rand Corp., the Santa Monica think tank, put the statewide cost to comply at around $110 billion.

“From a policy and fiscal responsibility perspective, it’s smart and it’s prudent” to adopt the new method, said Julie Puentes, a Garden Grove-based vice president for the Hospital Association of Southern California.

Hospitals, particularly through trade groups such as the California Hospital Association and the Hospital Association of Southern California, have complained about California’s earthquake safety law for years. Passed after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, it requires hospitals to either retrofit their facilities or build new ones.

Many large hospitals in OC already are working on big expansions to meet the law and to serve growth in the number of patients they expect.

St. Joseph Hospital-Orange and the University of California, Irvine Medical Center, two of the county’s largest facilities by net patient revenue, have large patient towers under construction.


Union Reaction

Unions that represent hospital workers are mixed on changes to the earthquake law.

The California Nurses Association, which typically opposes efforts backed by the state hospital association, has said in published reports that it’s considering legal action against the state to possibly halt the change. But the Service Employees International Union is more supportive, noting that state officials took time to explain the new process in detail to its representatives.

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