Save St. Luke's Hospital
Save St. Luke's Hospital
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Closure of 10th Floor and the Impact on 9th Floor at St. Luke’s Hospital BOS City Operations and Neighborhood Services Committee Nov 29, 2007 Good afternoon. My name is Bonita Palmer. I have been a member of the Family Practice Department for 17 years. My comments will be informal. I was not planning to speak. There were many other doctors who were planning to testify, however, but because of the rescheduling of this hearing are unable to be here today. And I will try to summarize some of their concerns. We are grateful they will have an opportunity to make public comment in January when this hearing is continued. An adult inpatient medical/surgical ward is in many ways the heart of a community hospital. When it was announced at our September quarterly medical staff meeting that the 10th Floor was closed, many questions were raised. We were told at that time that it would reopen should the census require it. This closure was decided upon with little if any input from doctors and nurses, and seemed motivated by a desire to cut cost, given that staff, especially nursing staff is a costly part of the hospital’s budget. This announcement seemed to signal the direction that CPMC was determined to take to continue to cuts services toward their ultimate plan of eliminating all inpatient acute care services. This closure of what had become primarily a Surgical Ward, came after a time revitalizing the services provided on it, and a very significant increase in patient and staff satisfaction. Surgery is a very important source of income for a hospital. Over the last few years the 10th Floor was remodeled, nurses were re-trained to provide very specialized post-op care, especially for our large number of orthopedic patients, and morale was high. A big effort had been made to streamline and improve OR procedures also, to make St. Luke’s a more attractive place for surgeons to do their cases. Some success had in this area had been realized. Then after the merger with CPMC, the closure of the 10th Floor has put all of that in jeopardy. As you heard, as a result of the closure of the 10th Floor, the 9th Floor has been come crowded and chaotic. On 10 all of our total joint patients were accommodated in a private room, in part to decrease the potential for post-op infection rates. Private rooms on 10 used to provide, also a quiet and private context in which families could visit their loved ones after surgery, and this has been particularly important to many of our elderly Hispanic orthopedic patients who do not speak English. Now that is not possible. It has recently come to my attention that single rooms are the norm at CPMC, and that each room has a plasma TV on the wall. We are acutely aware of the differences between the conditions for patients across town, and those currently at St. Luke’s. With more single rooms and better patient satisfaction, we had been able to attract new patients who might otherwise have chosen to have their surgery at our hospital…individuals with good insurance who can exercise their options when selecting care, unlike the majority of our patients who are MediCal who have little choice. Our feeling is that these decisions, like many of the others CPMC is making, with little if any input from doctors and nurses, are continuing to compromise our ability to attract paying patients so as to improve our financial condition, as well as compromising quality of patient care and patient satisfaction, and leading to a critical exacerbation of the morale of dedicated and committed staff who feel helpless to change things.
Bonita Ann Palmer, MD Family Practice Department St. Luke’s Hospital Co-Chair, Save St. Luke’s Campaign Bonita.Ann.Palmer@ecunet.org 415-647-8390
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