Ronen and the majority of her fellow supervisors, along with Mayor London Breed and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, have called on Becerra, California's former attorney general, to refrain from requiring the hospital to remove patients while it works toward recertification.
The majority of residents at Laguna Honda, one of the largest skilled nursing facilities in the country, are older and require specialized care for conditions including dementia, physical and post-stroke rehabilitation, HIV and mental illness.
But last year, after Laguna Honda failed a series of federal on-site safety inspections, a division of Becerra’s agency suspended government-provided health care options like Medicare and Medi-Cal, which make up the bulk of its funding. The hospital was subsequently ordered to immediately begin transferring or discharging patients.
The result was disastrous: Twelve of the 57 patients initially transferred from the hospital last summer — some of whom had dementia and limited physical and cognitive ability — died within weeks or months of being relocated.
The hospital now has until at least May to hold off on transferring its remaining patients, following an 11th-hour federal reprieve earlier this month.
“That is causing everyone unneeded stress. Just say [patient transfers] are off the table during the recertification process,” Ronen said.
Becerra, who has rarely spoken publicly about Laguna Honda, told reporters he's optimistic the 156-year-old facility will remain open, saying, “Laguna Honda is showing good faith and trying to move forward.”
But Becerra also said his hands are tied.
“We are, by law, required to make sure that patients are cared for safely and with the care they’re supposed to have,” he said during a press event on Thursday at Wellman’s Pharmacy in San Francisco’s Chinatown. “That’s outlined very clearly. We have no choice by law but to say that the safety of patients must come first.”
Ronen said Becerra also declined an invitation this week from Mayor London Breed — whose cousin and grandmother both received care at Laguna Honda — to see the hospital for himself. Neither Breed nor Becerra responded to requests for comment by publication time.
On Saturday, a spokesperson for Becerra disputed that he had declined the invitation, saying, “He wants to visit Laguna Honda and plans to do so in the coming weeks.”
Ronen acknowledged the serious deficiencies the hospital was cited for last year, including improper medication storage and illicit substances on site, but insisted those issues could be resolved without the simultaneous threat of having to move patients out.
Ronen also said she was recently told that the hospital, which currently has an interim CEO, may have to hire a permanent leader in order to be federally recertified. But it’s been nearly impossible to find someone qualified to take over an institution that's facing the constant threat of closure, she said.
“We are gumming up our entire hospital system, and frankly the homeless crisis in our streets is made worse by this,” Ronen said, pointing to how the hospital takes in many older, lower-income San Franciscans with complex health needs. “We are begging for fairness at this point.”
This story has been updated to include a response from a U.S. Health and Human Services spokesperson received on Feb. 11.
Feb. 13: The original version of this story stated that Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra was honored at a San Francisco General Hospital Foundation event on Feb. 9. In fact, he spoke at the event but was not officially honored.
