NO on CPMC’s Rebuild Plan! Supe’s Hearing on Traffic and City Healthcare Costs

Tell the SF Supervisors: NO on CPMC’s Rebuild Plan!
Supervisors Hearing on Healthcare Effects of Rebuild
Monday, July 9, 1-4 PM
Supervisors Chambers, SF City Hall
(Polk St. betw. Grove & McAllister, Civic Center BART)

One of a series of Supervisor hearings on the anticipated effects of CPMC’s Rebuild Plans. This hearing focuses on the effects of CPMC’s Rebuild plan on (1) how building a 550-bed hospital on one of the City’s busiest intersections will affect traffic, public transportation, and Neighborhood issues, and (2) how the rebuild will solidify CPMC’s monopoly position, leading to CPMC charging more for healthcare for City workers and retirees. (The City is determined to pass its increased costs from CPMC onto its current and former workers.)

In March, 2011, the LA Times wrote: “On average, hospitals in Northern California's most populous counties collect 56% more revenue per patient per day than hospitals in Southern California's largest counties, a Times analysis shows. Northern California hospitals say their prices are driven up by significantly higher costs for labor, supplies and other necessities. But leading healthcare economists say that most of the disparity stems from a lack of competition in the north, where a wave of consolidation has given a handful of hospital networks unusual power to dictate what private insurers and their customers pay for care. "Consolidation definitely drives up prices," said Glenn Melnick, a USC health economist who has written extensively on the issue. "This is a really serious problem."The driving force in the north is Sutter Health, a not-for-profit system of of 24 hospitals and roughly 5,000 doctors that reaches into more than 100 cities and towns across 20 counties. (Read the whole article at http://tinyurl.com/bsmf3c3 )


Background: California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) plans to consolidate its SF facilities into a mega-hospital at Van Ness and Geary. Community, labor, and patient advocates have serious concerns about (1) long-term viability of St. Luke’s Hospital for medically-underserved, poor, and largely minority South-East San Francisco, (2) availability of care for low-income uninsured and Medi-Cal recipients, (3) gentrification and loss of affordable housing, particularly in the adjoining Tenderloin, (4) rights of CPMC workers in closed units to transfer to the new Hospital, (5) rights of RNs to remain in their union, (6) loss of long-term and psychiatric care, (7) lack of assurance that CPMC will hire local people, (8) increased healthcare costs as CPMC gains monopoly, (9) increased traffic and disruption in an already-congested area, and (10) quality of life and environmental concerns.

Opposition groups, including the Good Neighbor Coalition, Jobs with Justice, the Calif. Nurses Association, and the Coalition for Health Planning demand a Community Benefits Agreement, a legally binding agreement between CPMC and affected unions and community groups, that would address the these issues.

In more recent developments, it has come out that CPMC was misleading the Board and the public in suggesting there was only a remote likelihood of triggering CPMC’s escape clause in its commitment to keep St. Luke’s Hospital open. Still more recently, leaked CPMC documents show CPMC was intending to lay off over 370 workers, provide even less charity care than the minimal amount being negotiated , and to close St. Luke’s Hospital in four years, all in breach of the agreement they were simultaneously negotiating with the City.