The Press-Telegram’s Brenda Duran writes today on the changes underway at Memorial Medical Center–and finds much the same situation I told you about on Thursday.
Here’s her lede:
“A reduction of 61 beds, an extended triage and wait-management plan, and new private specialty rooms for patients are among changes being implemented this month by Long Beach Memorial [...]

Memorial Medical Center cuts 61 beds, but what it means depends upon whom you ask

“I know you’re looking for a story,” Long Beach Memorial Medical Center’s public relations guy Rick Damrel says understandingly, late in a telephone conversation we had Thursday morning.
He’s right–and I’ve just asked him something about the economic stability of Long Beach’s [...]

Per the Press-Telegram, Long Beach Memorial Medical Center and Miller Children’s Hospital CEO Terry A. Belmont is resigning, effective Jan. 15, 2009.
Wonder how this may affect the hospital’s ongoing reorganization–or what it says about that?

Contradicting an alarming announcement by the doctor who chairs its Department of Medicine, a spokesperson for Long Beach Memorial Medical Center (LBMMC) insists that the hospital will neither drastically reduce its bed count nor its services to emergency patients when it reorganizes some of its services Nov. 1.
“We have 453 active beds and will have [...]

There’s another side to the impending changes on the adult side of Memorial Medical Center–which as we told you Monday have at least one longtime physician worried that the underinsured and uninsured may lose access to one of the city’s finest hospitals.

Long Beach Memorial Medical Center gets ready to reorganize
In a move aimed at–depending on whom you talk to–either reducing the number of uninsured patients admitted through its emergency room, or improving care to Long Beach residents, Long Beach Memorial Medical Center next month will reclassify a certain number of its general purpose medical beds.
An exact [...]

St. Mary Medical Center sues city–or does it?
Interesting Press-Telegram piece over the weekend. Apparently Catholic Healthcare West, the parent corporation of St. Mary Medical Center, has three separate breach-of-contract lawsuits going against the City of Long Beach.