Tell the SF Supervisors: NO on CPMC’s Rebuild Plan!

Tell the SF Supervisors: NO on CPMC’s Rebuild Plan!
Reject CPMC’s Environmental Impact Report!
Come to the Supervisor’s Hearing on CPMC’s Rebuild Plans
Tuesday, July 31, Time to be announced.
(See July 31 agenda at http://tinyurl.com/ylhhbbs when it’s posted.)
SF Supervisor’s Chambers, 2nd Floor, City Hall
(Polk St. betw. Grove & McAllister)

San Francisco Supervisors were supposed to vote on an appeal to CPMC’s Environmental Impact Report on July 17th, and it was clear that a majority of Supervisors were ready to sustain the appeal because of serious doubts about the Report’s accuracy and balance on traffic issues and alternative plans to sustain St. Luke’s Hospital. If the appeal were sustained, it would throw the whole CPMC process back to the Planning Commission and could force a major, perhaps fatal, setback.

Under this threat, CPMC suddenly dropped its intransigence, and begged for another two weeks where it claimed it would do serious negotiation about its plans and to make major revisions in its plans to meet major objections. The Supervisors agreed. Read more at http://tinyurl.com/cqarkke .

Nobody has a crystal ball for the next two weeks, but the Board is scheduled to take a vote on July 31 on whatever has been negotiated. Given CPMC’s intransigence and duplicity in dealing with the City, it is extremely unlikely that health and community advocates’ objections will be satisfied.

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. Luke’s, despite its promises.

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 serve the healthcare needs of Southeast San Francisco. St. Luke’s would also become economically sustainable.

This modification was considered in CPMC’s Environmental Impact Report, and then dismissed out-of-hand, as being incompatible with CPMC’s overall financial plan. This is the legal basis for challenging the CPMC’s Environmental Impact Report. Read more below.

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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.

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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.