California hospitals on shaky ground. Financial requirements of seismic standards posing threat.

California hospitals know all about financial tremors. They've been shaken by the growing dominance of managed care, large-scale failures of physician practice management firms and cuts in government reimbursement. Now looming are state-mandated standards intended to make hospitals better able to withstand earthquakes. It's the cost to implement the standards, estimated at more than $24 billion, that has hospitals truly quaking.