'A Catastrophic Occurrence': Rep. Eshoo Urges Bonta to Scrutinize Temporary ER Closure in Moss Beach

This report contains a correction.

Bay Area Congresswoman Anna Eshoo is stepping up her calls for the state to take action against a hospital corporation that closed an emergency room near Half Moon Bay.

Since April, just days after AHMC Healthcare shut down its Seton Coastside facility in Moss Beach, citing a need to make repairs after storm damage, Eshoo has been raising alarms.

On July 10, Eshoo wrote a letter to Attorney General Rob Bonta asking him to step in and hold the company accountable.

She said the closure, which could last through the end of the year, violates contractual obligations, leaves residents in the lurch and forces the county to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to try and fill the void.

“It was a catastrophic occurrence,” Eshoo told KQED about the closure. “My constituents lost that level of service, which could mean life or death.”

Eshoo previously wrote two letters to the California Department of Public Health in April to share her concerns but was rebuffed. The agency responded in a letter that it cannot compel a hospital to offer emergency services.

The agency also said it anticipated the impact of the temporary closure would be “minimal” because the coastside emergency department was used as a standby facility, “which assessed fewer than five patients a day, who were then either released or transferred to the Daly City campus for additional care.”

In her letter to Bonta, Eshoo said the agency saying the impact would not be significant is offensive.

“As the only facility providing emergency services for 55 miles along the Pacific Coastline, Seton Coastside has been a lifeline for acute medical emergencies, and CDPH’s assertion suggests to me that the Department had no understanding of the area and made a decision lacking a knowledge of it.”

She also wrote that she had a “highly unsatisfactory” call with Dr. Tomás Aragón, the head of the CDPH, in June, where he told her his hands were tied, she said.

Eshoo has cast doubt on whether any repair work is actually happening, noting her staff have been to the site multiple times this year since April and saw no work taking place.

AHMC bought the coastside facility along with Seton Medical Center in Daly City from nonprofit Verity Health in 2020, and in doing so, agreed to a list of conditions from the attorney general’s office at the time. Chief among those conditions was that it would keep running the facility through mid-December 2025, including the 24-hour standby emergency department.

“I certainly hope that the AG of California chooses to pursue the actions that need to be taken to bring a suit against them because I believe that they have walked away from the responsibilities that are contained in the contract,” Eshoo said.

Eshoo isn’t alone in her concerns. San Mateo County supervisors earlier this month approved spending nearly $500,000 to have Dignity Health Medical Foundation open a temporary urgent care facility in its existing clinic in Half Moon Bay.

Services are set to begin on Oct. 1 and run through March 2025 as a pilot program, with the option to extend the contract by another six months.

Since the closure of Seton Coastside, “residents have expressed concern that getting timely access to urgent care services requires going ‘over the hill’ via a two-lane highway subject to frequent traffic jams and stoppages,” a county memo said.

The county memo also noted concerns about “the large number of seniors” that might be challenged by long drives to get urgent care.

Supervisor Ray Mueller added that during the summer, the roads serving the coastal area often have “horrendous traffic” that could force someone seeking emergency medical care to be in the car more than an hour to reach another facility.

He said the temporary urgent care facility won’t fill the entire gap left by Seton’s closure, because it won’t operate 24 hours a day, and will only be open six days a week. The county is also looking into funding a vehicle with emergency room capabilities.

He’s been unhappy with what he described as a lack of transparency around the closure, including whether the storm damage actually affected the emergency department, and what kind of vetting of AHMC’s reasoning for the closure has been done by the state.

He noted a skilled nursing facility at the coastside building was closed for repairs much earlier than the emergency department and said he hasn’t received clear answers from Seton officials.

“We want this information verified, and the only entity that can verify it for us is going to be the Attorney General’s office,” Mueller said.

“Someone has to look at it and say whether or not it was appropriate. “We have to step into the void, provide taxpayer money, provide for the public health, when there’s a contract that’s supposed to do that,” Mueller said. “And no one is investigating whether or not this contract is being enforced appropriately.”

Bonta’s office and Seton Medical Center’s associate chief operating officer, Tim Schulze, did not respond to requests for comment.

Bonta is also being asked by local and state leaders to intervene in a similar situation in East San José, where the only trauma center on that side of Santa Clara County is planned to be shuttered Aug. 12.

American Hospital Corporation, or AHC Healthcare, cited declining patients as a reason to close the facility at its Regional Medical Center, along with a reduction in the quality of its stroke services and the elimination of its serious heart attack services.

Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez, doctors, nurses and patient advocates have called on Bonta to step in to prevent the closure, which they say puts residents’ lives at risk.

July 15: The original version of this report incorrectly spelled San Mateo County Supervisor Ray Mueller’s first name. We have since updated this story to reflect the correct spelling.