THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 15, 1996 TAG: 9605150386
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TONI WHITT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
Even though City Council members said there is nothing they can do about Maryview Hospital's takeover of Portsmouth General Hospital, the council decided to hold a forum to discuss the history of the hospitals and the buyout.
Council members said they would set a date for the forum at their next public meeting.
More than 200 citizens, doctors, nurses and hospital employees packed the council meeting Tuesday to ask the council to do anything possible to stop the sale. The group presented a petition with 5,200 signatures asking to keep Portsmouth General Hospital open.
Some speakers even asked the council to investigate how the hospital, once publicly owned, became a private entity. They wanted the paperwork examined in hopes that the city could take it over as a public hospital again.
Councilman Bernard D. Griffin said that the public forum would be mostly symbolic, to show that the council is aware of its concerns.
``We have two private companies making a deal; there's nothing we can do,'' Griffin said. ``We won't even get the report back until everything is done.''
``It's a done deal as far as I've been informed,'' said Mayor Gloria O. Webb. ``There's nothing we can do now. I'm sure when it went from a publicly owned hospital to privately owned everything was done appropriately. They had a board of directors.''
John Stone, the senior vice president of Maryview Hospital, said he and other hospital administrators are willing to meet with neighborhood groups to talk about their concerns. He said the sale of Portsmouth General shouldn't have been a surprise because of the declining use of the facility.
The crowd heckled, hissed and interrupted Stone during his speech to the council.
Paul M. Boynton, executive director of the Eastern Virginia Health Systems Agency, a state-funded, nonprofit group whose duties include regulating the expansion of hospitals, said the sale was inevitable.
``The population of Portsmouth really . . . has not been large enough to support two hospitals'' for years, he said. ``It makes an awful lot of sense for those hospitals to get together.''
The agency had been trying since the late 1970s to get the two hospitals to consolidate.
Both hospitals had been using only about 60 percent of their staffed beds. State standards say a healthy hospital operates at about 80 percent occupancy.
While the bottom line is what concerned regulators and administrators, citizens and hospital staff members were more concerned with jobs, sentiment and service.
Several speakers on Tuesday said they were worried that service to the city's poor would drop. Stone said Maryview provided $2.6 million in ``charity care'' last year and $7 million in uncompensated Medicare and Medicaid service.
John Hollowell, a retired doctor who had practiced at Portsmouth General, warned that Portsmouth citizens would not be able to get vasectomies, tubal ligations or abortions in a Portsmouth hospital. Maryview, a Roman Catholic hospital, does not provide any of those services.
Henry Fallon, chairman of the ``concerned public to rescue Portsmouth General Hospital'' said they might not be able to stop the buyout but that they hope their efforts will keep the hospital in business as a separate entity.
In other business, the council approved spending $120,000 to design and test exhibits for the second floor of the Children's Museum. Those design alternatives will include a carousel, the lens and any other exhibit that seems appropriate for the museum. MEMO: Staff writer Marie Joyce contributed to this report. by CNB