Community Psychiatric Closing Brea Mental Center : Health: The company says the short-stay facility will shut down later this summer and reopen eventually under a subsidiary. Sixty employees will be laid off.

BREA —  Community Psychiatric Center said it will close its short-stay mental hospital in Brea later this summer, resulting in a layoff of about 60 people.

The company plans to reopen the facility eventually under the management of its subsidiary, Transitional Hospitals Corp. The subsidiary operates long-term acute care centers, offering a less expensive alternative to hospital stays.

Doctors who used the Brea center are now referring patients to Community Psychiatric’s other hospitals in Santa Ana and Alhambra, said company spokeswoman Suzanne Hovdey.

The Laguna Hills-based company said it will also be able to find jobs in Santa Ana and Alhambra for about 40 of the nearly 100 Brea employees, Hovdey said. Employees were told of the change last week.

“Brea was not a profitable hospital,” Hovdey said. “This area was over-bedded for psychiatric care.”

The 151-bed Brea facility will close in “a few weeks,” Hovdey said, and no date has been set for reopening it. It will hold about 50 beds when the conversion is completed.

Community Psychiatric has been buying or converting facilities around the country into transitional hospitals for patients with physical, not mental, illnesses. Hovdey said more conversions are scheduled in Southern California within the next two years, but she would not identify specific locations for competitive reasons.

Meanwhile, five former Community Psychiatric employees have recently reported the company to authorities, saying they were fired for reporting illegal activities at the company.

Four former workers--James Blanton, David Montgomery, David Stickel and Joseph Vittorio--collectively filed a lawsuit in June, saying that the company falsified certification exams. The exams test a worker’s knowledge of the law regarding forcible hospitalization of mental patients.

The four men said they reported the problem to company officials in January and were fired in March.

Previously, a former Community Psychiatric nurse, Susan Arnett, told unemployment officials that her name was forged on a similar certifying exam. She said she was fired for reporting the forgery.

The company has said it would not terminate employees for whistle-blowing, but has refused to comment further.

Community Psychiatric reported in June that it had earned a second-quarter profit, after a huge first-quarter loss caused by restructuring costs. For the quarter ending May 31, profit was $3.5 million on revenue of $86.1 million.

The company is in the process of selling off its less profitable hospitals and cutting about 10% of its work force of 4,000 to increase efficiency. It is also trying to diversify its operations by opening the long-term acute care centers.