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Press Releases
These are the press releases others have issued
and news reports that appeared during the last year.
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topics by keyword.
Recent Media Coverage of
the fight to
Save St. Luke's
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St. Luke’s Hast Thou Forgotten thy Mission?
By Jonathan Farrell, Mar 18, 2008 The Mission
Dispatch
Sit-ins and candlelight vigils this past February got the attention
of the SF Chronicle as it brought into focus the critical fact that
St. Luke’s one of the city’s oldest and most vital hospitals faces a
possible shut-down as a Blue Ribbon Committee gathers to determine
its fate on March 20.
Kevin McCormack Media Rep for California Pacific Medical Center one
of the two corporate entities in control of St. Luke’s, sees the
forming of a committee as a positive step.
McCormack was enthusiastic when he talked to the Mission Dispatch
about the forming of a Blue Ribbon Committee as he admitted he was
biased about the idea.
"I think having a committee is a great idea. It brings together all
the experts that have lots of credibility. Their experience and
knowledge will have a much deeper and wider scope of understanding."
And with that, I am hoping they working all together as a committee
will help turn St. Luke's around giving it the direction and help it
needs," said McCormack
Currently, there are over 20 people who have agreed to participate.
It reads like a “who’s who” of the medical and business community;
including some non-profits like The SF Foundation. Described as
leaders in their given fields of expertise/experience. The list
continues to grow until the series of meetings officially convene.
Yet, activists and community leaders like Jane Martin of the Bernal
Heights Community Center have reservations. “CPMC & Sutter Health
has not been fully disclosing exactly what their plans are,” she
said. This is why we have reservations about the Blue Ribbon
Committee,” said Martin.
Some fear that the committee will have more participants aligning
with CPMC/Sutter than it will on the side of St. Luke’s. With many
broad and sweeping points of view on the committee, would the needs
of patients be swept way?
The 138-year-old St. Luke’s serves a significant portion of the
city’s population. Yet it is situated in the Mission, Bernal Heights
and surrounding areas. These parts of the city consist of working
class families, immigrants and low-income people.
Activists and community leaders believe that CPMC/Sutter wants to
close it down because it is not economically stable. Basically said,
it costs money and does not have the financial return CPMC/Sutter
expects.
“Most of the patients are MediCal, MediCare or simply uninsured,”
said Dr. Benita Ann Palmer, MD who feels very connected to St.
Luke’s. “The doctors and staff here are committed, they know that if
they work here, they are not out to make money but to serve the
community, especially the under-served,” she said.
Which brings to light the question, what is St. Luke’s losing money
on? Exactly, what costs are causing a concern for CPMC/Sutter? St.
Luke’s is a non-profit hospital originally founded by the
Episcopalian Diocese of SF in 1871. Its mission is to serve the
poor.
MORE
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California Pacific acquires lease on Folsom Street office building,
San Francisco's
largest hospital has signed one of the city's biggest office deals
in the last 12 months as it continues to shuffle real estate
holdings to comply with state seismic requirements.
California Pacific Medical Center agreed to occupy 171,000 square
feet at 633 Folsom St. - all seven floors, located between Second
and Hawthorne streets - according to the landlord, Swig Co. of San
Francisco. The terms of the 10-year deal weren't disclosed. The
asking rate for the building was about $45 per square foot,
suggesting a potential value of nearly $77 million.
Spokesman Kevin McCormack confirmed that the Sutter Health
affiliate signed the lease and said the move could come as soon as
March. He wasn't sure how many workers or which departments would
occupy the space, other than marketing and communications. About 600
employees could fit in the building, based on industry standards.
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Sutter Roseville Drops Medi-Cal Program, News 10, Dec. 5,
2007:Sutter Roseville has officially dumped its contract to treat
Medi-Cal patients for in-patient services, becoming the only large
regional hospital to make the move.
"The State of California only paid Sutter Roseville less than half
what it costs to treat patients. We just can't continue to do that,"
said hospital spokeswoman Robin Montgomery, who confirmed the
contract ended December 2. "Equipment, supplies, salaries, those
costs continue to climb. It's really important for us to cover
expenses."
Sutter Roseville currently has 10 Medi-Cal patients hospitalized.
Montgomery said their treatment will continue until their scheduled
release.
The hospital will also continue to treat Medi-Cal patients who need
only outpatient services, such as lab work or physical therapy. In
an emergency, Medi-Cal patients will also continue to be accepted,
Montgomery said. "We encourage anyone who needs emergency treatment
to come here if it's the closest hospital," Montgomery said.
"If they go in for emergencies, once they're stabilized, they'll be
transported to another hospital," said State Health Care Services
spokesman Tony Cava. He said in Kern County, San Joaquin Community
Hospital is also ending its contract, effective Saturday.
-
St. Luke’s
Needs Intensive Care - Noe Valley Voice, December 2007
-
Medical staff criticize St. Luke's plan; Doctors, nurses call
hospital proposal reduction in service,
Elizabeth Fernandez,
Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 5,
2007
-
-
Save St.
Luke's! Landmark hospital needs city's help: a column from
the San Francisco Bay Guardian.
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St. Luke's Hospital owner puts off plan to cut service,
San Francisco Chronicle:
California Pacific Medical
Center officials announced a delay Thursday in plans to end
pediatric and infant intensive care service at St. Luke's Hospital
and came under withering criticism over a longer-term strategy to
downgrade the Mission District hospital to an outpatient clinic. At
a hearing before a Board of Supervisors committee, hospital
executives also acknowledged failing to comply with a city law that
requires private hospitals and clinics to give city public health
officials 90 days' notice before ending services when they announced
a planned Nov. 16 closure of the pediatric services and the neonatal
ICU. A new date for the closure hasn't been set.
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Cutting care,
San Francisco Bay
Guardian, CA:
Confirming endless speculation
about the future of St. Luke's Hospital, executives from its parent
company, Sutter Health, have announced that it will be
shutting down yet more services, ultimately leaving little more than
a shell behind by 2009. Sutter told reporters Oct. 19 that it would
cease all in-patient care at the beleaguered Mission District
hospital within two years and maintain only outpatient services and
a drop-in emergency center. In "Sutter Bleeds St. Lukes" (9/19/07)
the Guardian reported that treatment for infants, physical
therapy, and longer-term specialized semiacute care were all being
targeted for cuts by Sutter. Combined with the earlier axing of
psychiatric services and other forms of care, the latest news
amounts to a slow death for St. Luke's.
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CNA Presents New Data on Sutter's Medical Redlining,
www.earthtimes.org
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See the Oct. 25, 2007 Hearing before the Neighborhood Services
Committee of the Board of Supervisors (titled
BOS City Operations and Neighborhood Services) .
This
video is provided by SFGTV, which provides an archive of selected meetings
that have occurred during the past year.
Video on Demand lets you watch these programs at your convenience.
To view meetings you will need Windows Media Player. (See
System Requirements)
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Cal Pacific's new diagnosis,
Bizjournals.com, NC:
California Pacific Medical Center, chastened by
what it sees as politically motivated delays to $2.4 billion in San
Francisco hospital replacement and expansion projects, is proposing
a comprehensive overhaul of its system, balancing controversial
moves with sweeteners in a bid to gain city support. Martin
Brotman, M.D., the hospital's longtime CEO, laid out in an exclusive
interview a new CPMC master plan designed to mollify critics and
alter the city's health-care topography. Specifically, it would:
- Turn both St. Luke's Hospital and California Pacific's main
Pacific Heights campus into outpatient "hubs," while augmenting
its Davies campus.
- Build several community-care clinics, primarily south of
Market Street, and contribute $20 million annually "to continue
the mission of St. Luke's."
- Use its California campus in the Richmond District as its
sole labor and delivery site, moving about 1,000 deliveries per
year that now occur at St. Luke's.
- Include in its new $1.7 billion Cathedral Hill facility a
"much enlarged emergency department" and advanced
medical-surgical and women's and children's services.
- Consider giving the city part of the St. Luke's site as a
possible new campus for city-owned
San Francisco General Hospital.
Converting St. Luke's, one of the city's main safety-net
hospitals for poor patients, to an outpatient center is political
dynamite in San Francisco. CPMC hopes the other elements of the
overall plan will be enough to help it gain favor.
-
St. Luke's Hospital's future remains uncertain, Fog City
Journal: Supervisors Michaela Alioto-Pier, Sophie Maxwell, Carmen Chu,
and Tom Ammiano listened to three and a half hours of testimony
Thursday during a Board of Supervisors hearing concerning California
Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) and its plan future to cut services
at St. Luke's Hospital.
-
 Bay Area nurses: "Sutter Health's not a good neighbor hospital,"
Fog City
Journal: Bay Area nurses held a press conference Wednesday outside of
St. Luke's Hospital in San Francisco to address plans by Sutter
Health to cut patient care services. The nurses are members of the
California Nurses Association (CNA). The nurses allege Sutter Health
and its' affiliate organization, California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC),
want to eliminate in-patient emergency and acute care services at
St. Luke's, and other Sutter Health hospitals. Plans for a two-day
strike scheduled on Oct. 10th and 11th was announced at the press
conference.
Photo(s) by
John Han
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Radical plan to stanch St. Luke's Hospital hemorrhaging, San Francisco
Chronicle: St. Luke's Hospital
in San Francisco's Mission District will no longer be an acute-care
facility after 2009, but become an outpatient "hub," providing
emergency care and services that don't require a hospital stay,
according to a plan announced Friday by California Pacific Medical
Center. Downgrading St. Luke's to an ambulatory care center is part
of a $2.4 billion master plan by Cal Pacific, the city's largest
private nonprofit hospital, which includes a $1.7 billion proposal
to build a 425-bed hospital on the site of the Cathedral Hill Hotel
on Van Ness Avenue at Geary Boulevard.
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Critics Raise Concerns over St. Luke's Plan, KCBS:
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KCBS) - San Francisco's St. Luke's Hospital presents its plan today to downgrade the facility to non-critical care. Opponents of that proposal are expected to make a strong showing at that meeting..
-
 Community groups fear loss of critical hospital services, Fog City
Journal: Members of the Bay Area Organizing Committee (BAOC)
convened last night with San Francisco elected officials to push
equal health care access for all city residents. The meeting at St
Mary's Cathedral and focused on needs for emergency room and acute
care services at St Luke's Hospital, which is now a California
Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) owned by Sutter Health. Located in the
southeast region of San Francisco, St Luke's has long provided
charitable hospital services to a predominately low income African
American and Latino community. But services have become less
accessible for residents in the area since CPMC merged with St.
Luke's."There are no profits to be made in serving the poor," said
Dr. Bonita Palmer who trained at San Francisco General Hospital and
served seventeen years on staff at St. Luke's Hospital. "That is why
so many doctors refuse to accept MediCal and why many hospitals do
not seek to attract these patients." Photo caption: Members of the Bay Area Organizing Committee (BAOC) held a meeting
yesterday at St. Mary's Cathedral to address impacts of cost cutting
hospital mergers
on health care delivery service. Photos by
John Han
-
 Hospital workers fight to save jobs and services,
Fog City
Journal: Members of the United Healthcare Workers West (UHW) voiced
loud opposition Wednesday against California Pacific Medical
Center's (CPMC) plan to cut 20 hospital jobs. An informational
picket was held to protest the layoffs. According to the UHW, the
CPMC layoffs would include the elimination of fifteen housekeeper
positions at all four hospital campuses. The plan calls for limiting
cleaning services to medical office buildings. Photo Caption: UHW workers picketed California Pacific Medical Center on Wednesday
to protest proposed layoffs and service cuts.
Photos by
John Han
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Sutter bleeds St. Luke's, San Francisco Bay
Guardian, CA:
Dr.
Bonita Palmer has worked at the embattled St. Luke's Hospital on the
southwest corner of César Chávez and Valencia for 17 years. Before a
packed room of union organizers and religious leaders Sept. 12 at
St. Mary's Cathedral near Japantown, she gave a brief speech about
her experiences at the beloved but financially troubled hospital.
"St. Luke's has
been struggling to stay afloat for many years," Palmer told the
audience. "Under managed care, reimbursements are down, the numbers
of uninsured patients are up, and the growing gap between income and
cost of care stresses the health of working people." Money woes at
St. Luke's are no secret. Its parent company, California Pacific
Medical Center, an otherwise lucrative group of San Francisco
hospitals owned by Sacramento's Sutter Health, describes the losses
at St. Luke's as anywhere from $20 million to $30 million annually.
Patient advocates and unions representing St. Luke's workers have
long feared closure of the hospital and its badly needed acute-care
services, which thousands of residents — the city's poorest among
them, living nearby in the SoMa, Mission, and Bayview–Hunters Point
neighborhoods — often visit when they can't get expensive medical
treatment elsewhere.
The
hospital continually faces cuts executed by the CPMC, from its
downgraded neonatal nursery to the subacute unit, where, Palmer
says, patients who require nonemergency but highly specialized care
from professionals are being turned away. "Sutter scrapped its plan
for a much-needed upgrade to our emergency room even as we continue
to receive the overflow of patients from" San Francisco General
Hospital, she said.
Staffers learned most recently that outpatient physical therapy,
which had already been trimmed, will be done away with completely,
while the hospital's 36-bed inpatient psychiatric unit and
outpatient clinic have already been closed. A woman in the audience
confessed afterward that she was nearly brought to tears by Palmer's
tale.
The
decisions only worsened Sutter's reputation across Northern
California for dwelling on its bottom line and further enraged the
United Healthcare Workers–West union, which represents thousands of
Sutter workers and with which the company has regularly battled for
a decade.
St.
Luke's contains one of the most active emergency rooms in the city,
and aside from General Hospital a mile or so away on Potrero Avenue,
it serves more patients benefiting from Medi-Cal and Sutter's
version of charity care services than just about any other facility.
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