Supervisors OK $2.3 Million to Support 4 AIDS Hospices

The County Board of Supervisors has committed another $2.38 million over three years to AIDS hospices, voting Tuesday to support new shelters in Pomona and Willowbrook and to back existing ones in Van Nuys and Central Los Angeles.

The new three-year commitments, approved amid complaints that the county’s AIDS program is moving too slowly, extends hospice funding to mid-1992. The action comes close to fulfilling pledges by the supervisors a year ago to spend $2 million annually on shelters for patients with acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

The funding package increases the number of county-supported hospice beds from 21 to 37 at a cost of about $50,000 each per year, or $1.85 million for 37.

Private Contributions

There are about 100 beds in AIDS hospices countywide, most of them paid for by private contributions or the patients themselves. About 6,900 AIDS cases have been confirmed in the county, including almost 4,500 that ended in death, since the county began keeping statistics on the disease.

While increasing its support Tuesday, the supervisors extended for only two months its contract with the Padua House hospice in downtown Long Beach. It also withdrew funding from Hughes House in the West Hollywood area, which ran out of money and closed last week.

Though both facilities are run by the same organization, the county withheld long-term support for different reasons, said John Schunhoff, assistant director of the County AIDS Office.

A management shake-up at Hospice/Los Angeles-Long Beach has left in doubt who holds the lease for the Padua House, so that contract will not be renewed, Schunhoff said. Under a formula that sets aside eight hospice beds--or $400,000 a year--for each of five supervisorial districts, the Padua House is now receiving the full eight-bed allotment for the 4th District, a coastal strip between Orange and Ventura counties.

Hospices will be asked to bid for the 4th District funds in June, Schunhoff said. County payments should begin a month or two after that, he said.

The Hughes House lost its $100,000-a-year contract because the county chose to award the full $400,000 allocation for the 3rd District to a 25-bed regional facility at Barlow Hospital in Elysian Park. However, the Hughes House is in line for state funds and could reopen as a shelter for AIDS patients who are not near death, he said.

AIDS activists, while pleased with increased hospice funding from the county, cite the withdrawal of support for Hughes House as an example of the shortcomings of the county’s policy of district-by-district allocations. They say it does not take into account the concentration of most AIDS cases in a few areas, especially West Hollywood and Long Beach.

Placed in Pool

John Maceri, president of Hospice/Los Angeles-Long Beach, and others have asked that hospice money set aside for one district but not spent, be placed in a pool to provide care in other districts where hospice beds already exist.

That point was made by members of the county AIDS Commission last week, when it asked Chief Administrative Officer Richard Dixon to find out how much hospice money in this year’s budget has not been spent.

“I understand the (political) reason for the distribution,� Maceri said. “The problem is . . . that Supervisor (Ed) Edelman’s district has the highest concentration of cases in the county, but he has the same amount of money that (Supervisor) Pete Schabarum has.�

Schunhoff said--counting this week’s allocations--$1.1 million of the $2-million hospice budget will have been spent for beds when the 1988-89 fiscal year ends June 30. Another $550,000 is being spent for other AIDS services, such as setting up an AIDS ward at Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center and providing anti-AIDS drugs to area clinics and hospitals.

Lead Time

About $350,000, or 18% of the $2 million, will not be spent this year, he said.

“A lot of this delay has to do with getting new programs up and running,� Schunhoff said. “There has to be a lead time.�

Schunhoff also said Schabarum has responded to the uneven distribution of AIDS cases by allowing money for six of the eight beds for his San Gabriel Valley district to be spent at a hospice in central Los Angeles. Patients treated there must be from Schabarum’s district, however, Schunhoff said.

Under the contracts awarded this week, the three organizations that will receive funding through June, 1992 are:

Hospice/Los Angeles-Long Beach. It will get about $94,000 a year for two beds at a shelter being set up in Pomona and about $235,000 a year for five beds at Pioneer House in Van Nuys.

Serra Ancillary Care Corp. It will get about $271,000 a year for six beds at an existing facility west of downtown Los Angeles.

AIDS Hospice Foundation. The agency, which also operates the Barlow Hospital hospice, will get about $158,000 a year for three beds in a new shelter near Martin Luther King-Drew Medical Center in Willowbrook, north of Compton.