National Nurses United

NewsBriefs_Oct Alt 12/30/09 2:06 PM Page 7 Communities Fight Sutter Shenanigans CALIFORNIA R ns working for Sutter Health continue to fight the corporation's regional plans to downsize, downgrade, or end services at a number of facilities around the San Francisco Bay Area. In San Francisco, RNs, neighborhood residents, community activists, and local religious leaders staged a candlelight vigil on Dec. 1 to protest Sutter's plans to dramatically shrink the number of licensed beds at St. Luke's Hospital, which is one of only two hospitals that serve the more diverse and low-income southern half of the city, from 225 to 82. It also wants to eliminate certain units, concentrating services at a new megahospital complex it plans to build on Cathedral Hill, an area closer to San Francisco's wealthier neighborhoods and hard to access for low-income residents without cars. At the same time, RNs working at St. Luke's and the other CNA/NNOC-represented campus of California Pacific Medical Center have been working without a contract since June 2007. NOVEMBER | DECEMBER 2009 "Cutting beds would be bad for the community," said Donna Johansen, a medical-surgical RN at St. Luke's for 11 years. "S.F. General [the county hospital] is already overloaded. People will die. Look at the traffic on Van Ness; it takes two to three hours to get across town [without a car]. If you take a bus, you have to do multiple transfers. And we want people to wait like that while they are sick?" Across the bay in San Leandro, CNA/ NNOC RNs are still allied with the community to save San Leandro Hospital, another facility that Sutter has on the chopping block for supposedly failing to make money. For the past several years, RNs, doctors, and residents mounted a large campaign to save the hospital and particularly its emergency room, which sees more than 27,000 patients each year. Sutter operates the hospital, but it is technically owned by the Eden Township Healthcare District. Another hospital operator showed interest in buying San Leandro Hospital and maintaining it as a full-service hospital, but Sutter appeared to be quietly cutting a private deal to buy the hospital under a 2007 memoW W W. C A L N U R S E S . O R G randum of understanding (MOU) with the district, and then lease it out to Alameda County for use as a rehabilitation facility, ending acute-care services at the facility. Meanwhile, activists to save San Leandro Hospital have lobbied to change the composition of the Eden Township Healthcare District board of directors because they argue that certain board members who approved the 2007 MOU had a conflict of interest since they were financially connected to Sutter. A recent resignation and replacement of one board member has supporters of saving the hospital optimistic that the board will begin taking a harder line with Sutter to meet the community's needs. The latest twist in the ongoing saga is complaints by hospital supporters that Sutter is again floating false rumors, intended to divide the community, by asserting that Eden Medical Center, a Sutter-owned area hospital, will not be rebuilt to meet seismic standards if Sutter also has to keep San Leandro open. Construction on the Eden rebuild is well underway, however, and the community has met rumors of the project not being finished with skepticism. Farther north in the bay, the community around Santa Rosa is also struggling to make sure that the hospital Sutter plans to rebuild there will actually serve the needs of nearby residents, many of whom are lower-income immigrants without health insurance. Sutter had originally tried to renege on a 20-year contract with the county to operate Sutter Medical Center of Santa Rosa. RNs and activists won a fight a couple years ago to keep the hospital open but, as in San Francisco, Sutter plans to rebuild a much smaller facility with only the bare-bones units needed to fulfill its obligations under the county contract, in a less accessible location. The county's independent analysis of the new hospital's capacity estimates that its general medical-surgical unit will be 50 percent over capacity on opening day, with overcrowding worsening in subsequent years. In addition, Sutter plans to build next door to this hospital a 28-bed physicians medical center under which it intends to house profitable services, such as cardiac care. Critics of Sutter say this plan amounts to construction of an inferior hospital for poor people and an upscale hospital for the wealthy. CNA/NNOC RNs are working with the community to challenge such plans and ensure quality care for all patients regardless of economic status. —staff report REGISTERED NURSE 7

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