ESCONDIDO ---- In an attempt to help alleviate a nursing shortage, Palomar Pomerado Health could strike a deal with Cal State San Marcos to speed up the creation of the university's new nursing program.

North County's four hospitals are short about 270 nurses, and the health care district ---- which runs half of the area's medical centers --- needs the university to start pumping out qualified nurses as soon as possible, district chief executive Michael Covert said this week.

Cal State San Marcos plans to open a nursing program in 2006, with the first students graduating into the nursing field in 2010.

But that's not soon enough for Palomar Pomerado, and the health care district is considering shelling out money ---- up to $3.7 million ---- and classroom space to get the program started a couple years ahead of schedule, Covert said.

"In light of our shortage of nurses, we thought, 'Gee, it might be a good idea to see what we can do to speed this process up,'" said Covert, whose district includes Palomar Medical Center in Escondido and Pomerado Hospital in Poway.

Officials hope the Cal State nursing program will give hoards of prospective nursing students a faster way to become working nurses. North County only has one nursing program, at Palomar College, and it has a waiting list 120 students long. Some students wait more than a year to enter the nursing school.

University and hospital officials said the talks are purely preliminary, and they don't yet have a proposal to take to their governing boards.

Health care district officials want the program to start in 2004 instead of 2006, a move that would cost between $3.5 and $3.7 million and require more classroom and lab space, said university provost Bob Sheath.

Palomar Pomerado owns some empty office space near the university that would be ideal for nursing classrooms and labs, Sheath said. The 14,000-square-foot property is vacant.

The health care district is considering giving that space to the nursing program, Covert said, and might donate up to $3.7 million over the next five years to get nursing students in class by next fall.

The cost may be substantially less than that ---- between $125,000 and $300,000 ---- to create a smaller version of the nursing program next year, or to create a Cal State San Marcos offshoot of another, already accredited nursing school.

"There are some things you can do to jump-start the program without going all out," Covert said. "We're looking at those and what it would cost to open the whole thing up a little early."

Even if the cost does run into the millions, getting more nurses into the job market may be worth the expense, he said. The hospital spends between $10 million and $12 million on temporary nurses from agencies to keep its hospitals running.

"For the kind of money we're spending on agency staffing, this might be worth a shot," he said.

Still, there are few guarantees that the Cal State nurses will work for Palomar Pomerado or any of North County's hospitals once they graduate.

"I don't know if there's a way to ensure that graduates will choose PPH, not to my knowledge at least," said Sheath, who said the school plans to hire a consultant to work on possibilities for speeding up the program.

"But if nurses do their classes here, and do their clinical training with a local hospital and have a good experience here, it's more likely that they will choose to make their career here," Sheath said.