Appeal Hearing on CPMC's Restructure of SF Healthcare

Appeal Hearing on CPMC's Restructure of SF Healthcare
Tuesday, July 17, 4 PM
(postponed from June 12)
SF City Hall, Supervisor's Chambers
Polk St. betw. Grove & McAllister


CPMC's plan to make healthcare even less accessible to South-East San Francisco passed the Planning Commission, and now rests with the Board of Supervisors. A coalition of community and health advocates has filed an appeal to at least modify CPMC's plan. We want to move 160 beds from the planned Cathedral Hill mega-hospital to the Mission District's St. Luke's Hospital, which could then be economically sustainable.

PLEASE ATTEND. CPMC's plan for rebuilding St. Luke's calls for only 80 beds. This is completely inadequate for the low-income, medically-underserved, and largely minority SouthEast sector, whose only other hospital is SF General, itself being rebuilt with little additional capacity. Moreover, St. Luke's cannot economically sustain itself with only 80 beds, and CPMC would certainly use this unsustainability as an excuse to close St. Lukes, despite its promises.

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Cathedral Hill Neighbors

APPEAL FILED ON CPMC CATHEDRAL HILL HOSPITAL PLAN

Certification of a Final Environmental Impact Report identified as:
Planning Case No. 2005.0555E, through its Motion No. 18588, for the proposed California Pacific Medical Center Long Range Development Plan Project.

An appeal on behalf of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United, Council of Community Housing Organizations, Cathedral Hill Neighbors Association, Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center, Jobs with Justice San Francisco, and San Franciscans for Healthcare, Housing, Jobs, and Justice has been filed on the decision of the Planning Commission on April 26, 2012.

The plan as approved for the Cathedral Hill campus will be an environmental disaster for the central city neighborhoods of Pacific Heights, Western Addition, Japantown, Cathedral Hill, Polk Corridor and the Tenderloin and a healthcare disaster for the eastern neighborhoods of San Francisco currently served by St. Luke's Hospital.

The Board of Supervisors needs to overturn this certification and to support the reasonable alternative, identified by the SF Planning Department in 2010 as Alternative 3A, which would relocate 160 beds from the California Campus to the St. Luke’s campus, creating two new sustainable hospitals close to equal size. This alternative creates the same number of new jobs and provides better health care access for all city residents, while reducing the negative traffic, transit, pedestrian safety and air quality impacts on our neighborhood.

A hearing date has been scheduled on Tuesday, June 12, 2012 July 17, at 4:00 p.m., at the Board of Supervisors meeting to be held in City Hall, Legislative Chamber, Room 250, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, San Francisco, CA 94102. Community, ecumenical and business representatives and other interested speakers should attend this hearing and/or provide written comment as outlined in the appeal posted on our website at sfchna.org.

You can also contact our new Supervisor at christina.olague [at] sfgov.org.

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From the upcoming (June, 2012) issue of the SF Gray Panthers newsletter:

Mayor’s Giveaway to CPMC

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 SouthEast San Francisco, (2) affordability 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 RNs to remain in the CNA, (5) loss of long-term and psychiatric care, (6) increased traffic and disruption by construction, and (7) 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 have demanded a Community Benefits Agreement, a legally binding agreement between CPMC and affected unions and community groups, that would address the above issues and be part of Mayor Ed Lee’s development agreement with CPMC.

Instead, Lee has reached a giveaway deal with (1) with few jobs guaranteed to City residents, (2) no assurances of affordable housing for its workforce, (3) no improvements on CPMC’s abysmal charity care, (3) permission to operate St. Luke’s Hospital with an unsustainably low number of beds and with an escape clause in its 20 year promise to keep it open. CPMC is raising its costs to Blue Shield, who will pass those costs on to City employees using that insurer. CPMC has also refused to recognize the union status of its own RNs moving to the new hospital. The SF Planning Commission has approved the deal. It now must pass the Supervisors.

OWL has a better idea: Base healthcare planning on the needs of ALL. “OWL recommends that city actions to approve CPMC applications be delayed until 2013 when the Healthcare Master Plan is available to guide official decisions. The Master Plan requires the Dept. of Public Health to conduct an assessment of healthcare need and to develop a “determination of consistency” to advise the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors on land use related to health care facilities.”