Sacramento, CA – In response to Attorney General Kamala Harris approving the sale of the Daughters of Charity Health System to Prime Healthcare, Assemblyman Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood) issued the following statement:
I am exceptionally disappointed in the Attorney General’s decision to approve the sale of the Daughters of Charity Health System (DCHS) to Prime Healthcare.
Community groups like those in the southeast Los Angeles County district I represent have organized for over a year to ensure a result that maintains the quality healthcare facilities they rely on. Today, the Attorney General dismissed those voices.
I remain gravely concerned about Prime’s ability to carry out DCHS’s mission of serving the poor and working on behalf of the community given the company’s history of cutting services, eliminating patients’ insurance contracts, raising prices, and laying off workers at hospitals it acquires.
Just yesterday, a San Bernardino Superior Court Judge found Prime Healthcare-owned Chino Valley Medical Center in contempt of court on 14 counts of needlessly admitting emergency room patients into the hospital in violation of the court's order to notify the patients' personal physicians.
Nonetheless, I will work – up to and including pursuing legislation – to ensure that Prime Healthcare lives up to the conditions placed on the sale, including keeping the hospitals open and key services available for 10 years, investing $150 million in capital improvement expenditures at the facilities over the next three years, and assuming payment of current and former employees’ retirement plans.