Residents also e-mailed, encouraging Schwarzenegger to pressure health officials
By NELSY RODRIGUEZ - Staff Writer | Friday, April 10, 2009

Roger Ziemer, right, chairman of the Southwest California Legislative Council, shakes the hand of Larry Grable, the director of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Inland Empire office, as members of chambers of commerce from Temecula, Wildomar, Murrieta, Lake Elsinore and Menifee stand behind him. The group delivered more than 1,500 letters from business and community members urging the governor to help open the newly finished addition to Rancho Springs Medical Center in Murrieta. (Photo by Andrew Foulk - For The Californian)

RIVERSIDE ---- More than 1,500 letters urging support for the opening of a new emergency room and women's center at Rancho Springs Medical Center in Murrieta were presented Friday to officials in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office in downtown Riverside.

The letters were collected and presented by members of the Southwest California Legislative Council and representatives of local legislators. The council is composed of the chambers of commerce in Murrieta, Temecula, Lake Elsinore, Wildomar and Menifee.

Included in the correspondence were personal stories of Southwest County residents' trips to the current emergency room and women's center and the writers' beliefs that there is a dire need for the new 72,000-square-foot facility to be opened.

In February, the California Department of Public Health denied Southwest Healthcare System ---- the parent company of the Murrieta hospital and Inland Valley Medical Center in Wildomar ---- the right to open its $53 million building because of previous violations concerning procedures and the placement of patients. Many of the violations cited by the state were related to treating patients in the emergency room or delivery rooms when the patients should have been admitted to other wings.

State officials said Friday that a review of the hospital administrators' plans to correct the previous violations is ongoing. They did not say when they might issue the hospital the permit it will need to open the new facility to patients.

The new building at Rancho Springs would increase the number of emergency room bays there from eight to 27, and the women's center would feature Southwest County's first intensive care unit for infants.

Hospital administrators had hoped the new building would resolve the space issues, but the state is requiring the health care provide to create a plan to prevent future violations at its current buildings before allowing it to open the new building.

Larry Grable, director of Schwarzenegger's Inland Empire field office, said the letters will be counted and put on the governor's desk for his review. They are in addition to hundreds of e-mails sent to his office from residents asking the governor to intervene in the state review process and make the opening of the new building a priority.

Last month, state Sens. Dennis Hollingsworth and John Benoit and Assemblymen Kevin Jeffries and Brian Nestande sent a letter to the governor condemning the "Catch-22" of state officials "telling the hospital that they cannot fix their overcrowding problem ... until they fix their overcrowding problem."

Grable said the personal letters spoke volumes about the need for expanded emergency services, but he added that due process must be followed.

"(State health officials have) pressure being put on them because of the pressure being put on (the governor)," Grable said. "But we can't tell them what to do."

For the most part, the letters follow a template drafted by the Southwest California Legislative Council, which was available on the council's Web site. But some contain accounts of personal experiences at the hospital.

In a letter detailing her stay at the hospital to deliver her baby, Melissa Butler of Winchester said the lack of delivery rooms caused her significant stress and endangered the life of her child.

"I had to be told to wait on the day that my child decided she wanted to be delivered," Butler wrote in her letter to Schwarzenegger. "The expansion to the medical center is extremely important, not just to myself but (also) to the other two women waiting to deliver a child in the hallway that day."

Terry Brown of Temecula said that when his wife was in the emergency room, it resembled a war scene.

"She saw what looked like a MASH unit during wartime: people were all over the place in gurneys in hallways screaming in pain," Brown wrote.

Reached Friday afternoon, Brown said his wife eventually was treated for bronchial problems in a nursing office rather than a hospital room.

Gerry Wilson of Temecula wrote of the disappointment he felt when the state denied the hospital's application to open the new building.

"The (current) ER is a zoo!!!" Wilson wrote in his letter. "We were so excited to watch the new building being built, but we still can't use it. What a shame!!!"

And Elizabeth Goodheart wrote that the delayed opening seemed to her like unnecessary red tape.

"This is the type of thing that's giving politicians a many times deserved bad name," the Murrieta woman wrote.

Riverside County is currently short of the hospital beds it needs to serve the population. While the nation maintains an average of one hospital bed per every 370 people, Riverside County's ratio is far lower, at one bed per every 1,000 residents, the Riverside County Department of Public Health estimates. The deficit is expected to worsen as the county grows, leaving professionals in the health care industry to believe that the county will be short 1,400 hospital beds by 2020.

Roger Ziemer, chairman of the legislative council, said that the interest generated by the letter drive proves how vital hospital services are to the area.

"Public health and safety is No. 1 on everyone's mind," Ziemer said at a press conference held after the group submitted the letters. "But the bureaucracy in California has put everything on hold."