The bottom line: a Sac'to remedy to let the acute care hospital continue operating while straddling an active earthquake fault won't happen unless top legislative leaders agree to waive rules, slip AB 2591's operative text into another bill (or use Sac'to's notorious "gut and amend" procedure to hijack another advancing bill.) That doesn't seem likely for now, since (as previously reported by LBREPORT.com) AB 2591 and its author O'Donnell got a politely chilly reception at an April 17 hearing the Assembly's Health Committee, when its chair commiserated with the City's predicament but refused to advance the bill unless the City had some type of seismic compliance plan in place.

April 17 statement by Assembly Health Committee Chair Wood: I am sympathetic to the fact that Long Beach Community Hospital will be closing, but the Assembly Health Committee has a long-standing record of only granting seismic extensions to hospitals that have seismic compliance plans in place...Hospitals have been planning for the upcoming 2020 seismic deadline for years, but this hospital has no such plan. Given that it sits on an active fault line, providing an extension would be irresponsible and a risk to public safety, and because of that, we will hold AB 2591 in this committee which will provide the City of Long Beach some time to submit a compliance plan.

The City didn't have such a plan in place then, and it it's not entirely clear what City Hall is planning now.

On June 1, 4th dist. Councilman Daryl Supernaw's weekly e-newsletter stated that:

[Supernaw newsletter] Negotiations continued this week between city staff and the top two groups proposing to operate the hospital. On Wednesday, John Keisler provided an update at our monthly community meeting at the Los Altos Library. He announced that the proposals may be coming back to a City Council closed session as early as June 12th. This morning [June 1], the second meeting of the Community Hospital Technical Working Group took place. This brought together current hospital staff, county agencies, city staff and other stakeholders to discuss hospital operations. There will also be a CHLB Foundation task force meeting on Monday, June 11th, 5:00 pm at the Long Beach Playhouse.

Last month, city management summarized its actions to that point in a May 8 memo visible here.

Some outlines of the city's strategy are have become visible.

• On May 15, the Council held a closed session regarding negotiation of "lease terms" pertaining to the Community Hospital property (1720 Termino Ave.) with three agenda-listed "Negotiating Parties": (1) Fountain Health Care, LLC; (2) College Health Enterprises; and (3) AMHC. A quick internet check by LBREPORT.com indicated:
  • College Health Enterprise's website says the firm is a "privately held healthcare management company [founded in 1986] that specializes in the operation and management of psychiatric and medical/surgical hospitals as well as partial hospitalization programs ("PHP")."
  • The "AMHC Healthcare" website describes the firm as "Serving the Greater Los Angeles Metro Area, the AHMC Healthcare Inc. affiliated hospitals provide comprehensive health services" with further information at this link.
  • A number of entities share names similar to "Fountain" and "Health" leaving us currently uncertain to what entity it pertains

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