The emergency department at Doctors Medical Center in San Pablo on Monday lacked the bustle of physicians, nurses and patients in the hallways and the beeps of monitoring equipment in a typical acute-care hospital.

On its last full day as a functioning hospital, patient beds were empty, the gift shop had already been cleared out, and the hospital’s remaining staff members gave each other looks of condolences as they passed each other in the nearly empty corridors.

On Tuesday, the financially strapped medical center, the only public hospital that serves the 250,000 residents between Berkeley and Vallejo, will close its doors after 60 years of providing care. The closure leaves many people in West Contra Costa County struggling to find new doctors and hospitals and hoping not to need emergency services.

Pinole resident Mitsuko Laird, 75, said she’s just hoping to stay healthy, but has had more than her share of emergencies in recent years. “For the last five years, I’ve been in and out of here with heart problems,” said Laird, who has had three heart attacks, bypass and stent surgery at the hospital. “I’m very worried.”

The most vibrant signs of life at the hospital were centered at the medical records department, where patients stopped by Monday to pick up medical files that contained histories of their births, broken bones, heart attacks and illnesses dating back decades.

“He has heart troubles, and he can’t walk. I don’t know what we’re going to do,” said Maria Iacobitti, 79, who was with her 91-year-old husband, Hector, as the El Cerrito couple picked up their medical records on their 63rd wedding anniversary.

“All night long, I prayed maybe a miracle would happen,” said Arduina Smith, 86, who has lived in Richmond for 60 years and gave birth to her youngest son at the hospital nearly 52 years ago.

Doctors Medical Center served a largely poor community and had been losing about $18 million a year. Much of its financial woes were because of the fact that it was a stand-alone public hospital and more than 80 percent of its patients were covered by Medicare or the state-federal Medicaid program known as Medi-Cal. These government programs don’t come close to covering the full cost of care. Fewer than 10 percent of the hospital’s patients had private insurance.

Efforts to save hospital

Previously named Brookside Hospital, Doctors managed to stay in business through ownership changes, short-term cash infusions and support from the community. Tenet Healthcare, a for-profit health organization that specializes in turning around struggling hospitals, took over Doctors in 1997 but declined to renew its lease in 2004, returning the hospital to the management of the West Contra Costa Healthcare District.

Residents approved two parcel tax measures, and Kaiser, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center and Walnut Creek’s John Muir Health System kicked in a combined $17 million from 2008 through 2010 to keep Doctors open.

But after residents last spring rejected a third parcel tax measure, the hospital’s fate was all but sealed.

'A medical wasteland’

The emergency department stopped accepting ambulance service in August, though 75 to 100 people still arrived on their own for emergency care each day. Hospital officials said the vast majority did not need emergency care and could have been treated in a clinic, but many didn’t know where else to turn.

“I think it’s the most needed hospital in the Bay Area,” said Dr. Hayden Evans, a diagnostic radiologist as he walked down one of the deserted halls Monday. “This (area) will become a medical wasteland. It’s very hard for these people to go anywhere else.”

The hospital district’s governing board voted last month to do an “orderly” shutdown, a process that will take months to complete but will ensure that hospital employees, vendors and others get paid. Most of the staff members pick up their final checks on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the hospital had already stopped taking new patients who needed ongoing care and transferred those who needed to be hospitalized to other medical centers.

Patients who need emergency care will probably be sent to Kaiser Richmond, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Berkeley, Contra Costa Regional Medical Center in Martinez, or John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek. Those hospitals are farther away, and traveling by ambulance on Interstate 80 or Highway 4 during busy commute hours is likely to lead to delays in care.

“People are going to die,” said Dr. Desmond Carson, an emergency physician who has worked at the hospital since 1998. Carson, who lives in Richmond, said he suspects some patients have already lost their lives because of the hospital’s impending closure and he’s worried about his own health should he need emergency care.

To pick up some of the slack, LifeLong Medical Care, a community health clinic, started urgent care services Monday across the street from Doctors Medical Center. The urgent care center will be open from noon to 8 p.m., though LifeLong officials said the hours may eventually be adjusted based on need.

While the center, called LifeLong Urgent Care, can provide X-rays and treat conditions such as broken bones, asthma, infections and the flu, it cannot handle complex emergencies and does not have the support of an acute-care hospital.

Doctors Medical Center’s emergency department, the last unit of the hospital serving patients, will shut its doors at 7 a.m. Tuesday. At that time, employees plan to gather around the hospital’s flagpole for a moment of silence.

“This is holy ground here,” Carson said. “People were born here. They started their lives here, they died here. Some people wouldn’t have made it if we weren’t here. ... There’s something holy, spiritual and sanctified that happened here.”

Victoria Colliver is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: vcolliver@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @vcolliver

Resources in West Contra Costa County

Residents in the West Contra Costa Healthcare District, which serves 250,000 people, will no longer be able to seek care at Doctors Medical Center in San Pablo effective Tuesday. Here are some alternatives:

Anyone experiencing a life-threatening medical or psychiatric emergency should call 911 immediately.

Contra Costa County Health Services is urging anyone without health insurance to call the county’s free advice nurse line at (877) 661-6230, Option 1 for non-life-threatening conditions. The line is available to anyone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The advice nurses can help people decide whether they need to seek emergency, urgent or next-day care, and where to get care. More information: http://cchealth.org/dmc/west-county-resources.php.

For urgent but not emergency medical needs, residents may seek care at the new LifeLong Urgent Care Center across the street from Doctors Medical Center at 2023 Vale Road in San Pablo. The urgent care center will be open from noon to 8 p.m. seven days a week. More information: www.lifelongmedical.org or (510) 231-9800.

Source: Contra Costa County Health Services; LifeLong Medical Care