Other potential buyers can’t match Prime’s offer
Published in the Jan. 7 – 23, 2015 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Karen Ayers, RN
Karen Ayers
As the last nurse out of Saint Louise Hospital in Morgan Hill in 1999, I have experienced firsthand the impact that the loss of a hospital has on a community. Having been a full time emergency department night nurse for 35 years at O’Connor and Saint Louise hospitals, the last 25 years at Saint Louise, I can speak with authority regarding the population of more than 100,000 people we serve between Morgan Hill, San Martin, Gilroy, Aromas, Prunedale, San Juan Bautista and parts of San Benito County and Watsonville. Included in this area are many nursing homes, psychiatric facilities, board and care homes, halfway houses for recovering drug addicts and alcoholics, senior housing, facilities for permanent head injuries, ventilator dependent patients, and the multiple pediatric cancer patients who all need St. Louise as their safety net because they are unable to speak for themselves.
The politicians who seek to deprive us of high-quality health care by denying the sale to Prime Healthcare do not get their own health care at our facilities and therefore have nothing to lose when they downgrade services or close. We have everything to lose. They will still get what they need when they need it.
Saint Louise Regional Hospital
In a life-threatening event, our patients don’t have an extra 30 minutes to get to the nearest hospital. A breach baby stuck in the birth canal dies without immediate surgical intervention. When suffering a stroke, that extra transport time can mean the difference between getting time-sensitive clot-busting medication in time to prevent a death or a lifetime of severe disabilities. In a heart attack, time means heart muscle destruction that can’t be reversed.
We have a medivac helicopter but it is frequently off on another transport or grounded due to inclement weather. Our indigent patients have no transportation and buses stop running from 11 p.m. to 8 a.m. to get up to San Jose. With only three ambulances in our area, longer transports to San Jose hospitals mean longer response times to local calls. I have experienced this many times when the county pulls all the rigs north leaving us with only one rig to cover our entire area.
Prime has financing plus will assume $300 million in liabilities, will honor labor contracts, assume 100 percent pension responsibility and has successfully turned around distressed hospitals. The county system doesn’t have the money to close the sale without passing bonds, will only save jobs after giving first option to county employees and demands a bankruptcy which puts the hospitals at immediate risk of closure. Blue Wolf Capital (another bidder for the hospitals) does not have financing. They have no history of managing hospitals. They will not honor pensions or labor contracts and plan to replace registered nurses with nursing assistants and techs, which will lower the standard and quality of care.
Is sacrificing the health and well-being of thousands worth the few political favors in the next elections? Don’t the 8,700 plus votes of the staff whose jobs are at risk count for anything?
It is imperative that we wake up our elected officials who hold the quality of South County lives in their hands and ask them to overlook their politics and do the right thing. They are hiding behind unproven accusations against Prime Healthcare to justify the self-serving decision to deny the sale that will not only save our hospitals but improve the facilities and quality of the services provided.
Karen Ayers is a registered nurse at St. Louise Regional Hospital. She lives in San Martin and wrote this column for Morgan Hill Life.
