Sinking ever deeper into a swirling sea of debt estimated in the tens of millions, Brotman Medical Center of Culver City, aging, creaky and with its credibility further threatened, is flirting with closure, according to sources.
Limping and gasping for financial air once again, a permanent shutdown of the 83-year-old hospital has been rumored before.
At the weekend, Brotman was reported on the brink of filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Ostensibly, this would give the obsessively secretive management team time to reorganize its debt and make a dent in its worst problems.
A number of experts, however, believe shutdown is the next logical step.
But Brotman is not talking.
Hasn’t since the latest in a series of ownership teams was introduced two years ago last spring. The face of ownership, Dr. Jacob Terner, steadfastly has declined to comment since becoming the CEO.
Brotman’s pending failure has been forecast often enough to almost become a Culver City cliché. By available accounts, Dr. Terner’s peers and minions have not handled Brotman’s day-to-day affairs anymore effectively than Tenet, the previous corporate owner.
So what is wrong with Brotman?
A Laundry List
Here is a partial list that sources say may finish off Culver City’s only hospital.
Beset by labor problems that could strangle fast-evaporating morale, Brotman’s two-year-old (doctor-oriented) management team arguably is tentative and overmatched. Throughout the complex, the state of their equipment frequently is criticized. The structures are badly worn and need replacing, or at least upgrading.
Add to this a dubious economic environment for hospitals throughout Southern California and the woes, say sources, would discourage optimists.
The hospital is said to have lacked financial stability for decades, exacerbated, some say, by the constantly churning changes in ownership.
Southland Vulnerable
Fifty of the 70 most recent hospital closures in the state have been in Southern California where, observers say, one overwhelming issue is the illegal immigrant population that regularly throngs hospitals.
Two other reported difficulties concern how anxious Brotman is to accept new patients and the willingness of prospective patients.
Brotman is far from unique. The Los Angeles Times reported two dozen Los Angeles hospitals in financial jeopardy.
First Loss Would be Immediate
At City Hall — where they know Brotman and its troubles better than a harried, frustrated parent knows a prodigal child — officials estimate the loss of Brotman would immediately cost the city $1.5 million a year in traveling and other expenses by the Fire Dept.’s paramedics.
The subtraction of the huge annual tax revenues yielded by Brotman also would deal a blow to City Hall’s treasury.
In the midst of an unprecedented prosperity trend that has enveloped Culver City in the past decade, the almost commonly predicted failure of Brotman would be a rare civic embarrassment. But it would be far from a shock.
One Downtown businessman today described Brotman’s problems as “older and sicker” than some of its patients.
Labor’s Day
Debt is but one of perhaps a half-dozen herculean-sized problems for the lone hospital in the region.
Brotman is weighted down beneath ongoing labor problems with the most powerful union in the country, the SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West. In the late summer, the union filed unfair labor practice charges against the hospital with the National Labor Relations Board. The union accused Brotman of “failing to bargain fairly over wages and benefits,” and of “reneging on agreements it already has made.”
Contract bargaining started almost a year and a half ago.