A private practice family physician's View
My name is Nicole
Lederman. I am a private practice family physician based at St. Luke’s and
co-chair of the department of family medicine. I have lived in Bernal Heights
for 10 years.
A few weeks I was
walking past St. Luke’s with my kids, and one of my girls looked up at the
hospital tower and said, “Mama, your hospital is so big and strong.”
She’s four, so
she’s an optimist, but I hope and believe that one day she’ll be right about
that.
St. Luke’s can
become an outstanding hospital, a hospital of choice for San Francisco residents
living on the Southeast side of town.
CPMC leadership has
told us that they want to improve primary care access and quality on the South
East side of San Francisco. As a neighborhood doctor, I am thrilled to hear
that. But as a primary care doctor I can also tell you that we need a hospital
to make that happen.
Primary care
doctors rely on a network of specialists and ancillary services to provide
excellent, coordinated care for our patients. Hospitals are the nexus of that
network. I am very worried that if our hospital closes, that our patients will
suffer as vital services like physical therapy, nuclear medicine etc. become
inaccessible in hospitals that are three bus rides away, and a world away in
terms of language and cultural sensitivity.
The same is true of
specialists. Many of our key specialists have told us that they are uncertain
that they will be able to maintain offices at St. Luke’s if the hospital
closes. Specialists need to be based at hospitals where they can do their
procedures and if there is no hospital in our area, we will likely lose many of
the key specialists we have worked hard to recruit in the past ten years.
Quality of care
will suffer not just for the underprivileged but also for the tens of thousands
of insured patients who get their primary care from doctors based at St. Luke’s.
We have an
opportunity to decide our future. St. Luke’s is in a unique, geographic
position serve the needs our community. The doctors at St. Luke’s don’t want to
see it closed. We want our hospital re-invigorated.
We need to be able
to offer our patients full pediatric care including NICU, in order to maintain
our outstanding obstetrics department. We need to be offer our patients
excellent physical therapy both inpatient and outpatient. We need to make the
hospital more appealing and more efficient in order to attract the paying
patients who are now crossing town for emergency and inpatient services. We
need to recruit and retain primary and specialty care physicians who are
dedicated to our diverse populations.
If we fail to do
these things, St. Luke’s will flounder. If the hospital closes, primary care
physicians like me, may be forced to move our practices, leaving our communities
without access to good care.
If instead we
commit ourselves to re-vitalizing St. Luke’s it will be “big and strong,” and
will become the hospital of choice for the almost 50% of San Francisco residents
living south of Market.
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