St. Francis Medical Center (Lynwood)

src: c1.staticflickr.com

St. Francis Medical Center is a not-for-profit hospital in Lynwood, California, US.

Video St. Francis Medical Center (Lynwood)

History

The hospital was founded in 1945 by the Sisters of St. Francis of Penance and Christian Charity and in 1981 acquired by the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. In January 1996, the hospital's emergency department was designated a level II trauma center.

After the August 2007 closure of the troubled nearby public hospital, Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital (King-Harbor), St. Francis' proximity caused it to receive the greater number of former patients. The hospital has since expanded its emergency department by 14 beds and seen an increase in patients to 180 per day (from 155), with the intensive care unit seeing an average rise from 26 patients to 33. As King-Harbor was long a major hospital for the city's sickest and poorest residents, the increase in uninsured and under-insured patients has put stress on the finances of the facility.

As the hospital continued to lose money, the California Medical Association and the California Nurses Association supported selling the facility to Prime Healthcare Services, though Service Employees International Union opposed the sale. Prime Healthcare backed away from sale based on the terms set by Attorney General Kamala Harris. On December 3, 2015 Harris conditionally approved transferring the hospital property to BlueMountain Capital, which promises $250 million in capital improvements.