Hospital for Entertainers to Close

The Motion Picture & Television Fund will shut the doors of its Woodland Hills hospital by year’s end to instead concentrate on serving patients living at home, in retirement communities or long-term care facilities. The hospital will relocate 100 patients in the long-term care facility to selected nursing homes in and around Los Angeles. The first transfers will not begin until March, the fund said. The closure will result in the elimination of 290 jobs during the year, or one-third of the fund’s hourly workers and one-third of its managerial staff. The hospital and long-term care facility operate at a deficit of $10 million a year, a figure that fund executives expect to rise in coming years as reimbursement rates from government programs does not keep pace with operating costs. Fund Foundation Board Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg warned that the hospital and long-term term care facility would be bankrupt in a few years if no action was taken. “The entertainment community depends on MPTF for a wide range of social and medical services,everything from healthcare to emergency financial assistance to childcare and family counseling,and if MPTF doesn’t do something now, pretty soon it won’t be able to do anything,” Katzenberg said in a statement. The phase-out will not affect the 185 residents of the fund’s independent- and assisted-living facilities or its six area health center. The fund will continue to operate its Harry’s Haven memory care facility.