By Tony Saavedra
The Orange County Register
ORANGE COUNTY, Calif. — Orange County Global Medical Center is seeking a court order that would overturn the county’s decision to stop first responders from taking stroke patients to the hospital following complaints of poor medical care.
In a writ filed Friday, Jan. 16, in Orange County Superior Court, lawyers for the Santa Ana hospital allege it was denied due process in the recent decision by county Emergency Medical Services to revoke its designation as one of nine centers receiving stroke patients by ambulance.
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Orange County Global also has requested a temporary restraining order allowing the hospital to resume receiving emergency stroke patients until a full hearing can be held.
The hospital alleged the decision by EMS Medical Director Carl Schultz to take away its designation as a county stroke-neurology receiving center was “arbitrary and capricious” and an abuse of his discretion.
“The medical director’s dismissive attitude toward procedural protections demonstrates his unsuitability to serve in a quasi-judicial role where fairness and impartiality are essential,” the motion states. “This is especially true given the nearly absolute power that the medical director wielded in this matter.”
The county declined to comment on the pending litigation.
First responders were ordered by the county’s Emergency Medical Services in July to stop taking stroke patients to the 282-bed hospital until further notice. In October, Schultz took the next step and revoked Orange County Global’s designation as a stroke center, which are considered specially equipped to treat stroke patients.
Under county guidelines, 911 dispatchers and paramedics must route stroke patients to a stroke center, bypassing other hospitals without the designation.
Orange County Global lawyers argued stroke patients who would otherwise be taken to that facility now have to be transported greater distances for care, endangering their lives. Since January 2023, OC Global has treated about 2,000 stroke patients, with nearly half arriving by ambulance.
Lawyers noted a county hearing was conducted before a three-physician panel, which recommended a suspension of no more than six months instead of revocation.
But Schultz stripped Orange County Global of its designation anyway.
Unaffected by the revocation is Orange County Global’s status as a “comprehensive stroke center” from the nonprofit Accreditation Commission for Health Care , which ensures that medical facilities meet national standards. The hospital also remains as one of Orange County’s three trauma centers, which treat the region’s critically injured.
The county’s investigation of the hospital was prompted by a complaint from a woman whose husband waited nearly eight hours for an emergency stroke surgery because Orange County Global allegedly didn’t have the necessary equipment and a qualified neurosurgeon available to perform the operation.
The Orange County Register also published details of a February 2025 state investigation that found troubling practices at the hospital, which serves many poor and vulnerable patients. The state has since declared that the medical center has corrected the deficiencies.
Among the problems found by the California Department of Public Health :
- The hospital routinely failed to pay contractors and suppliers, who then withheld services and equipment crucial to patient care. In one case, hundreds of lab samples went unprocessed for more than two weeks, including emergency tests to determine if patients had major illnesses, because the hospital had not paid its contracted laboratory.
- The hospital failed for months to fix a broken heating system, leaving emergency department patients shivering in the winter and making it impossible to maintain the appropriate temperature and humidity ratio to prevent bacteria from growing and fires from erupting in the oxygen-rich operating rooms.
- Hospital administrators failed to repair a faulty water heater, resulting in a lack of hot water needed to sterilize instruments and for surgery staff to wash their hands.
KPC Health, which owns Orange County Global, blamed the problems on industry-wide financial pressures affecting all medical centers that treat the poor and uninsured.
Orange County Global lawyers argued that the hearing was supposed to focus on the single complaint from the stroke patient, but evidence of the other problems was unfairly introduced without notice. They also argued the revocation was disproportionate to the complaint and not supported by the evidence.
“The hearing was riddled with procedural deficiencies, which undermined basic notions of fundamental fairness and violated OC Global’s due process rights,” the motion said.
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