AIDS Groups Deny Hospital’s Damage Claims

Leaders of AIDS support groups that will be barred from holding meetings at Barlow Hospital near downtown Los Angeles labeled as “absurd fabrications” Monday charges that AIDS patients had abused hospital property.

The representatives of six groups held an evening meeting at Barlow and resolved to write hospital directors to seek a chance “to defend ourselves.”

They said they had no knowledge of the behavior alleged by John R. Howard, Barlow’s chief administrator. On Saturday, Howard said he decided to ban the meetings, starting Nov. 14, after complaints about hospital property being damaged and people sleeping on the lawn. The groups have used the hospital’s meeting hall, free of charge, for a year.

Meanwhile, a hospital official who supports a plan to establish a one-of-a-kind, comprehensive AIDS treatment center at the hospital said Monday that some Barlow officials oppose the idea because they dislike homosexuals.

“Some unconscious homophobia is there,” said J. Douglas Elliott, vice president of Barlow’s 20-member board of directors. “They’re no different from the rest of the population.”

Howard said the proposed treatment center is a separate matter from the use of the meeting hall.

The hospital, he said, learned recently that Medi-Cal and private insurers do not adequately reimburse for AIDS care. As a result, a board committee last week rescinded a statement adopted by the board last year that said Barlow’s mission was to become an “organization with a major emphasis on AIDS.”

Elliott said he and others are gathering information about patient funding other than Medi-Cal and plan to present their findings to the full hospital board before it decides if it should give back a $300,000 federal grant for the center.