A growing number of Laguna Beach residents are raising complaints over the planned closure of their local emergency room as a new survey highlighted it as one of their biggest concerns on the future of the city.
Four hundred people – about 2% of the city’s population – were surveyed about their satisfaction and concerns within the city.
When asked whether it was important that Laguna Beach have a 24/7 emergency room, 88% stated that it was important to them.
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The hospital’s fate has been in peril since it was announced in January of this year that it would be required to undergo a $350 million improvement project being required by the state to bring the facility up to proper seismic standards by 2030.
Chief Executive of Providence Mission Hospital Seth Teigen told city officials at a January 27 city council meeting that the Providence Mission Hospital in Laguna Beach would remain open, but no longer serve as a primary destination to treat trauma or receive ambulances.
“One of the most important notes that I want to make about our hospital and our services is that we have no intention of leaving Laguna Beach,” Teigen said. “We intend to be in Laguna Beach in the future, but we recognize the hospital is going to have to look differently.”
The 24/7 emergency room received 17,000 visits in 2025, but few were stroke or heart attack cases, which are generally directed to Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach, Providence Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo or Kaiser in Irvine according to a staff report.
At the meeting, Teigen explained that a hospital in California is an “acute care hospital or nothing” because of required services including an operating room, radiology department, a pharmacy and lab.
Because of this, the staff report states that the hospital would be shifting focus to “urgent care and expanded outpatient medical services,” like routine exams, diagnostic tools, and procedures not requiring an overnight stay.
The city also established a preliminary action plan and several input groups to oversee decisions made surrounding the hospital’s closures, including an ad hoc committee with council members Alex Rounaghi and Bob Whalen.
The preliminary stages will allow research to be done on ER and ambulance patterns, laws surrounding ER closures and countywide EMS data “including the regional impact of a possible closure of the Providence Mission Hospital / Laguna Beach ER” according to the report.
“One of the fallacies that I’ve heard so far in this process is the idea that there’s only a certain number of people who actually need to go to the ER where they could otherwise go to urgent care,” Rounaghi said at a March 10 meeting.
“But I think a lot of people go to the ER with the idea that they have a serious emergency,” he continued. “They might not have a serious emergency, but the only way that they know that they don’t have a serious emergency is going to the ER.”
The hospital’s emergency room was recently renovated, reopening in 2019 with CT and X-ray technology, trauma rooms for adults and children, and was reconfigured to hold high numbers of patients.
Other hospitals in the vicinity would pick up the slack of emergency and ambulance services with Providence in Mission Viejo 8.6 miles away, MemorialCare Saddleback Medical Center 11 miles away, Kaiser Permanente in Irvine 13 miles away and Hoag Hospital in Newport 16 miles away.
“The additional transit time required for city ambulances to travel to either location — especially in peak traffic — is dramatic and could mean the difference between life and death,” Trish Sweeney wrote in a public comment to council at the March 10 meeting.
The hospital was opened in the late 1950s after a Laguna Beach police officer bled to death after not reaching an emergency center in time.
“The community had to raise half the funds, and the other half came from a federal grant. And they did it by talent shows, and chicken dinners, and bake sales,” said Ann Christoph, a public commenter, at the city council’s March 10 meeting.
“Somehow, it came together and they built this hospital. So we need to band together again.”
Michelle King is a Voice of OC Tracy Wood Reporting Fellow. Contact her at mcaitlin254@gmail.com.
