National Nurses United

6 N A T I O N A L N U R S E W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G M AY | J U N E 2 0 1 6 CALIFORNIA R egistered nurses are working closely with concerned community members to fight Sutter Health's plans to close Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley, Calif., in the past two months joining forces with city councils in Oakland, Berkeley, El Cerrito, San Pablo, and Rich- mond to pass resolutions opposing any shut- down of the critically needed East Bay facility. Sutter Health has said it will close Alta Bates, the only remaining full-service hospi- tal along the densely populated corridor between Oakland and Vallejo, by no later than 2030, though it is widely expected that Sutter will begin reducing patient care serv- ices there within a couple of years, nurses say. State records show a "very high utiliza- tion rate of acute-care services" over the past dozen years, including more than one million days of patients, in Alta Bates hospi- tal beds. Doctors Medical Center, in San Pablo to the north, closed in April 2015, and many patients who would otherwise have been treated at Doctors now are funneled to Alta Bates. Aside from Alta Bates, the only other hospital remaining along the I-80 corridor is a small Kaiser facility in Rich- mond which is not a full-service hospital and has been overwhelmed since Doctors shut its doors. According to the World Health Organ- ization, the heavily urban areas of Alameda and Contra Costa Counties served by Alta Bates already has fewer available hospital beds per 1,000 residents than the national average, not even adjusting for population growth. "As a cardiac nurse and a patient advocate, it is vital that Alta Bates remain a full-service, acute-care hospital," said Stephanie Crowe Patten, a cardiac telemetry RN at Alta Bates Summit, who works at the Oakland campus of the medical center. Nurses at the Oakland facility are adamant that it does not have the capacity to make up for the loss of the Berkeley facility. "Every minute counts in minimizing cardiac tissue death in heart attack patients. Without this hospital, the residents of the city of Berkeley, West Contra Costa county, and Alameda county will be deprived of healthcare anywhere near their home and people will suffer adverse outcomes. Sutter Health's enormous economic gains should not be at the expense of the community." Her RN colleague at Alta Bates agreed. "When you treat strokes and heart attacks, you learn that time is muscle, time is brain, time is the difference between life and death," said Alta Bates emergency RN Bipin Walia. "We have already seen an increase in patients since the closure of Doctors San Pablo. If patients have to travel further to Oakland, six, eight, and 10-hour waits will be the norm. We need to keep a full-service, acute-care hospital" in Berkeley. Berkeley City Council members voiced people's worst fears. "If Alta Bates closes, people will die. We will work with state, coun- ty, and regional officials to keep this hospital open," warned Jesse Arrequin, the council member who cosponsored the resolution with council member Kriss Worthington. "Sutter can afford to serve the East Bay. They have been moving services for years—this has nothing to do with retrofitting—it's about profit. Other communities, San Francisco, San Leandro, have won this fight. We need to create a regional coalition to win here." Loss of Alta Bates would also have an especially devastating impact on women and children, nurses warn. Alta Bates is a major regional center of care for women in labor, post and ante partum care, and newborn intensive care. When Sutter merged Alta Bates with Summit, it closed all women and infant services in Oakland, shifting all that care to the Berkeley site. More than 110,000 babies have been delivered at the Berkeley campus just in the past 15 years. Sutter says it will maintain only doctors' offices and potentially an "urgent care center" in Berkeley. But a broad range of vital patient services cannot be treated at an urgent care center, including heart attacks, strokes, seizures, internal bleeding, most burns, life- threatening allergic reactions, poisoning, electrical shock, severe abdominal pain, head and back injuries, and bone breaks. Patients needing true emergency care would need to be rushed to a full-service hospital from Berkeley along heavily traf- ficked roads that can result in delays of up to 90 minutes or longer, depending on ambu- lance and transport staff availability. Addi- tionally, first responders are then removed for longer periods of time from other patient care needs. "What the public needs to know is that an urgent care center, which Sutter believes is sufficient for Berkeley and other cities served by our hospital, is not equipped to handle serious life-threatening situations," noted Walia. "Every day as an ER nurse, I see that critically ill patients with strokes, severe bleeding, heart attacks, or imminent delivery need medical treatment now. These patients do not have extra minutes to travel to another hospital. In emergency medicine, minutes matter. When treatment is delayed, patients die." —Staff report RNs and community outraged over Sutter's planned closure of Alta Bates Only full-service hospital serving large section of East Bay NEWS BRIEFS

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