The Evolving Crises at Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center

Patient Safety Endangered by a Cultural Wall of Silence
New:  12/2/19  LHH Leadership Fingered in Patient Abuse Scandal

Multiple Efficacy Problems Questioned
11/7/19  Invisible Successes Navigating the Homeless

Citywide Public Land Re-Zoning
10/2/19   “Local Control” Excludes Neighborhood Input
Vote “No” on Prop. “E” November 2019! 

Lottery in Bond Disguise (72 ≠ 517)
9/3/19   Who Affordable Housing Bond Leaves Behind
Vote “No” on Prop. “A” November 2019! 

7/4/19   Breed’s Blank Check:  Re-Zoning Public Lands
A Land-Grab, by Any Other Name, Developer’s Will Love  Vote “No”

6/7/19   High Costs of Wrongful Arrests and Convictions
$53.4 Million Costs of Failure to Sufficiently Reconsider

November 2015 $310 Million Affordable Housing Bond Update
5/6/19   Affordable Housing That Wasn’t
Sneak Peek:  November 2019 $500 Million Affordable Bond Preview

Incestuous Intersection of Politics and Money
4/16/19   Regime Churn of SFERS’ Trustees
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?   Scott R. Heldfond’s Connections to
Aon Plc and San Francisco–Bangalore Sister City Initiative…

$90.7 Million and Counting …
3/6/19  Lawsuit Settlement Costs Continue to Soar

San Francisco's Severe Shortage of Elderly & Disabled Healthcare Facilities
2/14/19  Supervisor Yee Must Prioritize Full Spectrum
Out-of-County Patient Discharges:   Is What’s Past, Prologue?

FOR OVER 50 YEARS, LAGUNA HONDA HOSPITAL AND REHABILITATION CENTER (LHH) has been a medical-model, long-term care skilled nursing facility (SNF) serving San Franciscos elderly, frail residents.  Doctors, nurses, and ancillary staff at Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center (LHH) are a close-knit interdisciplinary team providing skilled nursing and rehabilitation care to our elderly and people with disabilities, compassionate, safe environment.

Now, about the only way people can get into LHH is if they have a dual, or triple, diagnosis (that would include some sort of medical problem requiring skilled nursing care, along with either a second diagnosis of mental illness, or a third diagnosis of substance abuse).  Those with a single diagnosis (say Alzheimers, Parkinsons, or a traumatic head injury), are finding it more difficult to be admitted into LHH.  Increasingly in San Francisco, unless you have multiple diagnoses, your access to public health services is being curtailed.  (The same phenomena occuring at LHH is also occuring, or soon will, at so-called AIDS integrated service programs funded with Ryan White CARE Act money that have curtailed eligibility to only those having dual and triple diagnoses, leaving those with a single diagnosis of AIDS to fend for themselves.)

Gleaned from public records and public records requests, conflicting smoke signals are occurring about the true amount of cost overruns of the LHH replacement facility, and how cost overruns will affect the downsizing of LHH from the 1,200 beds promised to voters who passed Proposition A in 1999.

Now, LHHs future is in dire jeopardy, and irreversible decisions about its future are to be made by the end of December 2005!

There is good reason to believe that the new LHH may open with 300 to 400 fewer beds than promised in 1999.  Should that occur, losing 300 to 400 SNF beds in one fell swoop, and another 180 beds converted for locked units, could increase San Franciscos SNF-bed shortage in the year 2020 (just 16 years from now) to between 1,588 and 2,880 beds short.

The problems of the disabled, frail, and elderly seeking admission to LHH are caused by a shortage of nursing homes and funding cuts.  How did this come to be?  And how did the voters of San Francisco get mislead, yet again, by vague ballot initiatives that result in not getting what the voters were promised?

LHH Downsizing StraightFacts Summary

• As of May 27, 2004, the cost overrun for the replacement facility was reported to be $30 million.
• On June 1, 2004, it was reported that up to 240 beds may be eliminated from the new hospital.
• As of September 7, 2004, the cost overrun may have grown by an additional $10 million between the end of May and September 2004 to $40 million.
• When asked on September 7 whether the additional cost overrun might require cutting another 60 beds, bringing the total to 300 beds to be cut from the new hospital, the rebuild project manager indicated that might be a possibility.
• On September 29, 2004, material submitted by the Replacement Facility project manager to the Board of Supervisors Finance and Audits Committee revealed that in Spring 2004 the general manager of the project, Turner Construction Company, prepared an estimate that reveals the cost overrun for the replacement project stands at a staggering $43.984 million.
• The LHH Replacement Project will provide 300 fully secured [locked] units, which will begin coming on line in FY 07-08; they represent 180 more locked units than in the current facility, and are intended to be used for younger, combative patients who are behaviorally disruptive and unsafe along side of frail, elderly San Franciscans.
• Between the 300 beds likely not to be built, and the extra 180 locked units, the new facility will probably open with nearly 500 fewer skilled nursing beds than promised in 1999.
  
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Page Updated:  12/2/2019