THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 14, 1996 TAG: 9607130069
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Another View
SOURCE: BY HENRY FALLON
LENGTH: 116 lines
Neither a $13 million benefit from the Portsmouth General Hospital Foundation (June 21, Ida Kay's Portsmouth) nor a defense of the 1988 hospital sale (June 23, Another View) has helped the people of Portsmouth and its neighboring communities to allay their anger toward the sale of Portsmouth General Hospital to Bon Secours Maryview Medical Center.
To clear the darkening cloud hovering over the secret sale, someone must accurately answer the questions raised surrounding the conversion of Portsmouth General Hospital from a public trust to a nonstock, nonprofit incorporation and its two sales, one in 1988 and the second one recently.
Given the impact of this secret deal on the quality and affordability of future hospital care for the people of Portsmouth and surrounding localities, the sale should be a public matter, a community matter, and must not be dismissed as an ordinary business transaction between two ``private companies.''
With the exception of childbirth, no one enjoys hospitalization. Having to deal with people's health and lives means a hospital must be more than just a facility equipped with advanced medical technology and instruments. It is a place supported by compassionate doctors, nurses and medical personnel who are ready to extend their helping hands to the sick regardless of their racial or financial backgrounds. To operate a hospital as an ordinary business not only negates the humanitarian role of the health professionals, but also fuels the skyrocketing hospital and overall health care costs.
The people in the community know what they need from their hospital. They do not want their hospital financially stranded. They do not want their hospital overcharging them, either.
To reduce the hospital and overall health care costs and to maintain quality hospital care, the people of the community should run the nonprofit hospital and streamline the hospital administration. The public would elect members of one-half of the hospital board who would ensure the soundness of hospital finance and reasonably low hospital charges to the patients.
Joining the people of the community, the hospital medical staff would elect members of the other half of the hospital board who would ensure the quality of hospital care with only necessary facilities and equipment. All members of the hospital board would be subject to term limits. Such a hospital would better serve the people with quality, affordability and no concern for profitability and corporate manipulation. So, in whose interest should a hospital be operated as a business?
Portsmouth General Hospital, like many other nonprofit hospitals in this country, was founded to provide hospital care to the people in the community regardless of their ability to pay for the care.
Without a proper public consultation in 1980, the then-PGH board converted the hospital's status from the public trust into a nonstock, nonprofit corporation. After mismanaging the hospital, the board failed to submit their resignations to the community and instead unilaterally decided, against the wishes of the people and doctors in the community, to sell the hospital to Tidewater Health Care Inc., which as expected had very few concerns about the welfare of the people of Portsmouth and its neighboring communities but was concerned about the hospital's profitability.
To characterize the sale of the hospital in 1988 as a difficult decision is irresponsible and unacceptable. Rather, the decision was an inexcusable mistake and a disservice to the community.
Losing Portsmouth General Hospital has serious consequences for the people of Portsmouth and its neighboring communities. More than 800 PGH employees have been forced to give up their accumulated benefits, amounting to thousands of dollars each in some cases, and they must also face the uncertainty of their future employment. Their unemployment will cause the loss of tax revenue and increase spending on unemployment benefits.
Medical and surgical procedures banned by Catholic teaching will soon become unavailable here and force the people to seek such services elsewhere. More importantly, allowing Maryview Hospital to become ``the only game in town'' effectively denies the choice for people who are loyal to Portsmouth General Hospital or dislike Bon Secours Maryview Hospital and who need the services that are unavailable as the result of the sale. The more informed patients will seek services elsewhere. How can Bon Secours Maryview Hospital accommodate all the indigent in the community in the future?
Recently, a top executive of the Bon Secours Health System reportedly claimed to the soon-to-be-unemployed Portsmouth General Hospital staff that the purchase of the hospital was not for business reasons, but for the mission (presumed a religious one).
However, the public needs to know that Bon Secours has acquired several hospitals in the Richmond area since May 1993 and DePaul Hospital in Norfolk, and it also has recently signed a letter of intent in a joint venture (a buyout?) with Mary Immaculate Hospital in Newport News. Given these facts and its aggressiveness in expanding hospital care and dictating to its medical staff since the takeover of Maryview Hospital, the Bon Secours Health System has undoubtedly placed the purchase and closing of Portsmouth General Hospital, as its only competitor in Portsmouth, at the top of its agenda.
Such a pattern makes the people of the community wonder if the mission of Bon Secours is for money or mercy. Does the hospital administration care more about profits or patients, monopolization or serving the community?
There are many questions that need to be asked and answered, among them:
Who is going to pay for the cost of the Portsmouth General Hospital acquisition?
Why should the people of the community be treated like a commodity or ``cash cows'' and be transferable from one hospital to another?
Why would the nonprofit (or not-for-profit) hospital care so much about profits?
Who is really enjoying the profits?
Why do the hospital administrators decline to face the people in public meetings to answer these and other questions?
Did the hospitals really lose money in spite of overcharging their patients?
Where is the missing sales agreement?
Have the financial records of Portsmouth General Hospital been audited by an independent auditor, and are these audit results open to the public?
The people of Portsmouth and its neighboring communities, as well as all Americans, should not be victimized in the war waged by hospitals around the country.
It is time for the citizens to demand the return of Portsmouth General Hospital into the hands of the community. Only if the community supports and runs Portsmouth General Hospital locally can the people in the community ensure themselves affordable and quality hospital care. MEMO: Henry Fallon is chairman of Concerned Public to Rescue Portsmouth
General Hospital.
KEYWORDS: PORTSMOUTH GENERAL HOSPITAL by CNB