Save St. Luke's Hospital

St. Luke’s Needs Intensive Care 

Noe Valley Voice, December 2007

 

Editor:

 

St. Luke’s Hospital, located on the eastern edge of Noe Valley near the end of 27^th St., has kept its doors open to all, regardless of ability to pay, for 136 years.  But if California Pacific Medical Center, its corporate parent, implements its announced Master Plan, the acute care in-patient services at St. Luke’s will cease operating at the end of 2009.

 

Already, CPMC has targeted the worker compensation clinic, occupational therapy and physical therapy, and is planning to eliminate the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and Pediatrics service in February.

 

The Master Plan, recently presented to the Board of Supervisors and Health Commission, has generated considerable concern among St. Luke’s physicians, nurses and other staff, as well as residents of the neighborhoods served by CPMC’s four campuses.

 

The closure of in-patient services will downgrade our Emergency Department to an urgent care clinic. For life threatening emergencies in Noe Valley, St. Luke’s would no longer have the specialists needed to provide high quality care. Ambulances transport times will greatly increase, with a significant impact in critical cases. San Francisco General Hospital, already overburdened, might not be able to handle the overflow of patients it would receive.

 

We believe that the elimination of pediatric services will leave many children in our community without access to medical care and undermine the safety and quality of the obstetrics service that currently delivers 1300 babies each year.

 

We are concerned that elimination of worker compensation treatment and related services will undermine doctors’ practices and make them even less viable than they currently are given the high percentage of low-paying Medi-Cal patients we treat.

 

For more information about this issue that will affect the health and safety of all Noe Valley residents, please view our website, www.savestlukes.org.  There is an on-line petition, a blog for patients’ stories, and links to recent news. 

 

We urge our neighbors to communicate their concerns to CPMC’s president and board, Sutter Health, the Health Commission, and Board of Supervisors.  Together, we believe a solution can be found to restore St. Luke’s to financial viability and insure its ability to carry out its mission of service into the future.

 

Karen Makely, MD, Pediatrician, Elizabeth St.

Susan Bailey, MD, General and Vascular Surgeon, Hill St.

Marc Snyder, MD, Emergency Physician, 22^nd St. resident

Lora Burke, MD, General and Breast Surgeon, Hill St.