DATE: Thursday, September 4, 1997           TAG: 9709040468

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY ERIKA REIF, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NEWPORT NEWS                      LENGTH:  129 lines

INSTITUTION'S UTILITIES ARE CUT NEWPORT NEWS HOSPITAL'S DIRECTORS HOPE TO REOPEN IN ABOUT 45 DAYS.

A hole in the fence surrounding Newport News General Hospital is how Sharon House used to get there.

She bypassed the well-groomed street entrance and the long drive shaded by a grove of trees with pink blooms. From the projects next door where House lived, the gaping fence was quicker.

No question the hospital's East End location was convenient to her and others in the low-income area.

Before Newport News General closed its doors - at least temporarily - on Aug. 27, the hospital was the fastest way to get emergency treatment. But House, 20, and others in her neighborhood have mostly complaints about the hospital's services.

The Virginia Health Department ordered the 126-bed hospital to stop admitting new patients on Aug. 26 after it failed a surprise state inspection. Hospital directors closed the facility last week, with hopes of reopening in about 45 days. Its two overnight patients were discharged.

As a result of bills left unpaid, Virginia Power and Virginia Natural Gas turned off electricity and gas services Wednesday. The power company tab approached $100,000, and the gas bill was about $35,000, utility officials said.

But the financial and management problems that overran the hospital after years of struggle are somewhat removed from House and other local clients.

What lingers in the minds of some area residents is its long-festering reputation for not responding to basic health care needs. That unshakable image, often passed by word of mouth, is wound into the hospital's decline.

House mentions a few of her own experiences, pointing to a swollen knot on her cheek.

``I was trying to get some help there and they said they couldn't do it,'' she said in frustration. ``They sent me somewhere all the way up Executive Drive,'' to a clinic in another part of town.

But like many in her neighborhood, House doesn't own a car. And if she had one, House insists she'd have driven it to some other hospital.

House and others living in the vicinity also complain about what seemed like inordinately long waits in an emergency room that closed before midnight.

``That ain't no emergency room when it closes at 12 - that's when everything gets started,'' she said.

The hospital was ``like the last stop,'' she added, shaking her head. ``I'm gonna speak the truth. They weren't doing their job.''

The hospital dates to 1908 as Whittaker Memorial. Since the mid-'80s, it has been operating as Newport News General in a one-story, brown brick building some describe as ``beautiful.''

Until desegregation in the '60s, it was a health-care haven to blacks when white-owned hospitals wouldn't admit African Americans or relegated them to basement rooms.

But over the last three decades, once-loyal patrons have had other options. Larger hospitals nearby offered more services, while Newport News General was forced to make cuts to stay alive.

Some observers say administrators went wrong when they blindly tried to uphold the facility's legacy as one of a handful of historically black hospitals remaining in the country. Other hospitals in recent years were becoming part of larger conglomerates.

Leadership has been a mix of administrators and concerned community members who frequently volunteer their services. The most recent administrator was Hampton surgeon Alvin Bryant, who took the post as a volunteer in 1995 but was fired July 31 by the hospital's Board of Trustees.

Despite controversy between two hospital boards over Bryant's termination, three finalists have been chosen in a search for a new hospital administrator, said current hospital spokesman, Hampton attorney Oscar H. Blayton.

Bryant sums up the hospital's problems as a lack of money from a history of covering for patients who couldn't afford to pay. He believes the answer lies in developing new programs instead of relying on in-patient revenue.

Spokesman Blayton said that since the hospital's bankruptcy in 1990, there have been difficulties in financially reorganizing. The hospital is now back to ``square one,'' gathering opinions about what the facility should do next.

``It's been proposed to open department by department,'' Blayton says. ``Probably not as a full-blown acute care facility.''

The state will name the problems forcing the shutdown in a report expected to reach the hospital this week. A state official said the report will not become public until the hospital has had a chance to respond.

Blayton described the problems as financial and structural, and involving medical records, equipment and personnel. One target was the emergency room, which by state standards should remain open 24 hours a day, Blayton says.

``The area is underserved medically, no question about that,'' Blayton said. ``The income level of clientele is not very high. A lot are at poverty level.''

But he said that some patients took advantage of the hospital.

``A lot of people will come in and claim to be homeless or indigent, and sometimes they are not,'' Blayton said. ``Sometimes, people wouldn't even give their right names, and they would see a physician and be treated - and they in fact could afford to pay.''

Former hospital spokesman Tommy Bennett saw that happening. He was ``downsized'' with a handful of other managers in January and is now administrator at an adult home in Hampton.

``They never turned anybody away,'' Bennett said. ``And that's the part that I'm sad about.''

He blamed the hospital's problems on bad business decisions. Such as trying to survive as an independent entity.

``Everybody knows that in 1997 . . . you just can't hang out there by yourself.''

Without major financial help, the hospital could do little to pick up the falling pieces. Or improve its soured reputation.

Bennett recalls driving the hospital van in the community's Christmas parade in 1994. As the PR man, he was waving, throwing candy to children and passing out brochures. He continued smiling, he said, even after hearing jeers from the crowd directed at him, saying, ``the dead-man hospital.''

Whether the scars to its reputation were founded or not, the hospital had trouble putting on a happy face when, internally, it was near collapse. Former materials manager Creighton Incorminias Jr., now office manager for a Hampton construction contractor, was let go around the same time as Bennett.

Getting basic supplies and equipment was a constant juggling act, Incorminias says.

``Ninety percent of the vendors had us on COD or check-in-advance. If you didn't have the money, you were trying to get a deal so you could get the supplies in,'' he said.

He often had to call other hospitals to borrow equipment before a scheduled surgery, Incorminias says.

Some patients swear by the hospital and its services and have remained loyal for a lifetime. Marie Holland, 86, of Chesapeake had her appendix removed at Newport News General in 1927 when she lived in that city.

The care there has always been ``wonderful,'' up through her last visit there this summer, she said. ``I hope that they can get themselves together and reopen again.'' MEMO: [For a related story, see page B1 of THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT for this

date.] ILLUSTRATION: Sharon House

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