National Medical to Buy St. Jude Yorba Linda : Transition: The Los Angeles company plans to convert the hospital to a psychiatric facility for all ages. Financially troubled St. Jude will close Nov. 14.

YORBA LINDA — National Medical Enterprises of Los Angeles has agreed to buy St. Jude Hospital Yorba Linda for an undisclosed price and plans to convert it to a psychiatric facility, hospital officials said Wednesday.

The not-for-profit hospital, which was acquired by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange in 1981 and has been losing money ever since, will close its doors on Nov. 14, administrators said.

NME will purchase the 106-bed, acute-care facility through its Speciality Hospital Group subsidiary. NME owns more than 500 hospitals and nursing homes nationwide, including St. Jude Yorba Linda’s closest competitor, Placentia-Linda Community Hospital

Although licensed for more beds, the Yorba Linda facility has been operating 72 and had only 23 occupied on Wednesday. Like other small hospitals across the nation, St. Jude Yorba Linda has suffered from high rates of uncompensated care, low public- and private-insurance reimbursements, and deep price-cutting by health maintenance organizations, executives said.

Dr. Gregg DeNicola, a family physician in Yorba Linda, said the shutdown saddened him because St. Jude Yorba Linda opened its doors wider to charity patients than did other local hospitals.

“St. Jude Yorba Linda went the furthest toward caring for the uncompensated and healing the sick, no matter what their financial circumstances,” DeNicola said. “It’s unfortunate that that helped lead to its demise.”

The hospital will offer its 200 employees a week’s pay for each year of service and will continue to extend some benefits beyond the two-week closing date, according to Thomas J. Porath, vice president of St. Joseph Health System, the holding company for the eight hospitals owned by the sisters.

A number of employees have already found jobs elsewhere or will transfer to the two other Orange County hospitals run by the sisters, St. Joseph in Orange, and St. Jude in Fullerton, Porath said. The others will be offered career counseling.

NME will provide inpatient and outpatient treatment for adolescents and adults and may also offer drug and alcohol treatment when the facility reopens, said Mary Stancill, a company spokeswoman in Los Angeles. St. Jude Yorba Linda has a large chemical-dependency treatment unit.

Health-care industry analyst Richard Carpe said the proposed sale is likely to benefit Placentia-Linda and St. Jude-Fullerton hospitals. Placentia-Linda has been running about 60% full, and St. Joseph and St. Jude-Fullerton have been averaging 65% occupancy, hospital administrators said.

But the sale stands to hurt Brea Hospital Neuropsychiatric Center and possibly other hospitals that offered psychiatric services, including UCI Medical Center in Irvine, said Carpe, a partner in charge of health-care consulting at Laventhol & Horwath in Costa Mesa.

“Psychiatric is very competitive today,” Carpe said. “There are empty beds in other psychiatric hospitals, and there’s some costs associated with converting to an all-psychiatric facility.”

Besides Placentia-Linda, NME owns 37 acute-care hospitals across the country, including Los Alamitos Medical Center, Stancill said. The chain also runs the John Douglas French Center for Alzheimer’s disease in Los Alamitos, and is building a teaching hospital for the University of Southern California.

NME, which has annual revenues of $3.6 billion, also owns 360 nursing homes, including four in Orange County: Buena Vista Convalescent Center, and the Hill Haven Convalescent hospitals in Orange, Santa Ana and Anaheim, Stancill said.