San Francisco officials mobilize to win recertification as Laguna Honda faces CMS closure timeline

Laguna Honda Hospital — the city‑owned skilled nursing facility that provides long‑term medical care to hundreds of San Franciscans — is under an urgent federal recertification process after the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) found compliance problems this spring. City and hospital leaders told the Board of Supervisors on June 14 that CMS has decertified the hospital and has required a closure, patient transfer and relocation plan tied to federal payments.

Department of Public Health (DPH) leadership, Laguna Honda executives and SEIU Local 1021 representatives described a two‑track effort: implement immediate corrective actions and prepare for a CMS resurvey while carrying out a mandatory transfer plan for patients. Roland Pickens, interim executive officer of Laguna Honda and chief executive officer of the San Francisco Health Network, said the hospital and DPH have retained two consulting firms to prepare the hospital for a re‑survey and to produce a sustainability and operations plan.

"We took the decertification of Laguna Honda as a very serious matter and thus established the incident command system to make sure that we were harnessing all of the resources available," Pickens said during the committee‑of‑the‑whole hearing. He outlined a timeline in which consultants will perform two…