OCEANSIDE -- After 81 days without a contract, Tri-City Medical Center and Blue Cross of California agreed to a new three-year deal Thursday.

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"We signed it (Wednesday), and they signed it today," Tri-City Chief Executive Officer Arthur Gonzalez said Thursday.

Gonzalez said the new contract is effective immediately and retroactive to Jan. 1, when the previous three-year contract between the public hospital and the for-profit insurer expired. The two sides had been negotiating for six months before declaring an impasse in mid-December.

"Anybody who had come to the hospital between Jan. 1 and now, they would be covered under the terms of the new contract," Gonzalez said.

Both Blue Cross and Tri-City declined to discuss the specifics of the new contract.

However, Gonzalez said the new contract does provide Tri-City with more compensation than the previous one.

"We feel very good about the contract," he said. "We're very pleased. We're hoping that the public sees it that way, too."

Blue Cross spokesperson Leslie Porras confirmed Thursday that Blue Cross patients who received "authorized services" -- or medical care normally covered by the insurance company -- at Tri-City after the contract expired Jan. 1 will be covered retroactively for those services.

"All that said, however, it is recommended that members with questions contact the customer service number on the back of their card," Porras said.

There are more than 27,000 Blue Cross patients who use Tri-City, according to the California Department of Managed Healthcare. Tri-City officials have said that Blue Cross patients represent 7 percent of the hospital's total patient population.

Porras said patients who have scheduled elective medical procedures at other hospitals would not be required to move those procedures to Tri-City, which serves Oceanside, Vista and Carlsbad.

During the time when there was no contract, Blue Cross was required by state law to continue covering emergency care and any procedures at Tri-City that were already scheduled before the previous contract expired Jan 1. Doctors who had operating privileges only at Tri-City were also allowed to continue admitting patients to the hospital until April 30.

Gonzalez said that Tri-City negotiators walked away from negotiations in December because negotiators were prepared to hold out for a new contract that covers the hospital's costs for insured medical care. He said it was also important for other insurance companies to see that Tri-City isn't playing favorites with the insurance giant.

Both Gonzalez and Allen Coleman, Tri-City's vice president of strategic services, said they do not believe that three months without a Blue Cross contract had had a serious impact on the hospital's bottom line. On the other hand, Gonzalez said, a spike in the number of uninsured and underinsured patients that the hospital treated in February has had a negative financial effect on the hospital.

"There is an impact on our bottom line, but not as a result of Blue Cross," Gonzalez said.

Coleman said that because the new contract with Blue Cross is retroactive, any financial hit Tri-City may have absorbed between Jan. 1 and March 23 will eventually disappear.

Both executives said they expect the retroactive nature of the contract to bring back doctors and patients who may have left Tri-City in frustration over the impasse with Blue Cross.

Coleman said the lingering contract impasse with Blue Cross had underlined the importance of letting Tri-City patients know sooner that a contract with their insurance company could lapse if negotiations were to fail.

He said Tri-City may begin negotiating its insurance contracts earlier, perhaps giving the public as much as a six-month warning that a contract lapse could be in the offing. He said that much time would give consumers more time to react.

"It would give employers and patients plenty of time to make arrangements whether they want to stay with that insurance company, or whether they want to switch to another insurance company," Coleman said. "Whether or not that is even possible or not is still to be determined."

Contact staff writer Paul Sisson at (760) 901-4087 or psisson@nctimes.com.