Orange County Global Medical Center has lost its county designation as a stroke center nearly four months after health officials placed the facility on suspension following reports of poor medical care.
Emergency dispatchers and paramedics were ordered by the county’s Emergency Medical Services agency in July to stop routing stroke patients to the Santa Ana hospital until further notice. Last week, county EMS took the next step and dropped Orange County Global as one of nine medical facilities designated as a stroke neurology-receiving center, which are considered specially equipped to treat stroke patients.
Under county guidelines, 911 dispatchers and paramedics must route stroke patients to a stroke neurology-receiving center, bypassing other hospitals without the designation.
In a terse statement, county EMS Medical Director Carl Schultz said Orange County Global could reapply for the stroke designation after Jan. 18, 2026, upon which the county will assess whether it needs another stroke center.
KPC Health, which owns Orange County Global and a network of hospitals under the Global brand, said in a statement that Schultz’s decision is unprecedented and jeopardizes the health and safety of Orange County residents. KPC said a three-physician appeals panel had recommended suspension rather than revocation.
“We will pursue all options to fight this decision and preserve this critical access point for care,” KPC said.
The hospital remains as one of Orange County’s three trauma centers, which treat the region’s critically injured.
The county’s decision to first suspend and then remove the 282-bed hospital as a stroke center 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 to conduct the operation.
The Orange County Register also recently published details of a state investigation in February that found troubling practices at the hospital, which serves many poor and vulnerable patients. Since then, the state has declared that the medical center has corrected the problems.
Among the deficiencies cited 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.
- 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 blamed the problems on industry-wide financial pressures affecting all medical centers that treat the poor and uninsured.
At least three lawsuits also have been filed alleging poor care for stroke patients, including Sarah Martin, 56, who accused Orange County Global of negligently delaying diagnosing and treating her brain aneurysm.
Martin said she went to the hospital’s emergency department on April 29, 2024, complaining of excruciating, shooting pain in the upper part of her face and scalp. She added that an ER physician diagnosed her as having a migraine and sent her home to “sleep it off.”
Martin returned to Orange County Global the following day, still complaining of pain. Although an ER physician ordered a CT angiogram for Martin, who was admitted to the hospital, the test was never performed, according to the state report.
Martin said it wasn’t until 17 hours after her second visit to the ER that an interventional radiologist finally took her to surgery for a coil embolization procedure to stop the bleeding in her brain.
Another lawsuit alleged that stroke patient Khusro Jhumra, 51, needed a brain catheter, but the supplier had cut off the hospital for not paying its bills. Jhumra also needed immediate surgery but had to wait nearly eight hours because the hospital did not have a qualified neurosurgeon on call, according to the suit. The delay caused Jhumra to sustain major brain damage, the suit alleges.