Deal
to be closed on June 1
By
Will Collette
I
am happy to see that Westerly Hospital has been saved from imminent closure,
now that they have received all of the state agency approvals they need.
Lawrence & Memorial (L&M) Hospital of Stonington will sign
all the final paperwork to get the keys to Westerly Hospital on June 1.
That’s the same day that Westerly Hospital will close its obstetrics department, now that the RI Health Department has closed the door on retaining that service.
That’s the same day that Westerly Hospital will close its obstetrics department, now that the RI Health Department has closed the door on retaining that service.
While
this is a welcome bail-out, it does not mean that Westerly Hospital is out of
trouble. Under the terms of the deal, L&M is only pledged to keep clinical
services going for two years and to keep Westerly Hospital in operation as an
acute care hospital for five years.
RI
Attorney General Peter Kilmartin was the last official to sign off on the
deal, setting multiple conditions for the ownership transfer that include
retaining the name, “Westerly Hospital” and that L&M will raise money to be
used to improve Westerly Hospital. $30
million is expected to be spent on capital improvements and L&M is
supposed to inject $6.5 million in working capital.
The
hospital worker unions at Westerly Hospital were an integral part of the
coalition to save Westerly from closure. Unfortunately, L&M brings a lot of
baggage with it as its own unions have filed unfair labor charges against
L&M management for unfairly cutting staff – telling their own workers that
they don’t have money to retain already overworked staff while telling the RI
Health Department that they have lots of money – and for shifting jobs out of
the unionized hospital into non-union subsidiaries.
This
has prompted the AFT’s health
care workers division to launch a new organizing drive that targets those
non-union subsidiaries. The union says it is hopeful that the National Labor
Relations Board will rule in their favor in the charge that L&M committed
an unfair labor practice by shifting hospital jobs to the subsidiaries, but
decided to start organizing because “these
folks don’t want to wait.”
The
AFT also said in a statement that workers at L&M Physician Associates, the
non-union subsidiary, say they were "kept out of
the hospital's unions despite providing the same excellent care" as
hospital workers.
The
state of Connecticut declined to sanction L&M
for moving its obstetrics and outpatient mental health departments out of the
hospital and into the subsidiaries, ruling that those changes did not require
prior state approval. However, they also said that L&M needed the state’s
approval to change the management of those services – which L&M has not
received.
In my earlier reports (here and here in particular), I raised concerns about
L&M’s low ratings for patient satisfaction and quality of care – ratings
that are lower than Westerly Hospital’s have been, even in its distressed
circumstances, and for sake of comparison, far lower than South County
Hospital’s exemplary ratings.
These
problems did not escape the attention of Dr. Robert Crausman, the
consultant hired by the RI Health Department to review the deal. In 2010, the
Connecticut Department of Public Health cited L&M for multiple violations
that led to a corrective action plan, consent order and close health department
attention.
In
March, the Public Health Department did an inspection on behalf of Medicare and
notified L&M on March 28 of more deficiencies that are being reported to
Medicare. Among the defects were inappropriate, potentially dangerous,
equipment in the dialysis unit, improper use of restraints on patients,
incomplete medication orders and other patient safety issues.
Dr.
Crausman reported to the RI Health Department that these findings were serious,
but "are
of the type commonly identified on hospital inspection surveys and should be
readily corrected." He noted that the
Connecticut health department’s oversight was "somewhat reassuring."
I guess that when you’re a seasoned professional in the medical business, you get used to
things that might make us laypeople less than comfortable. However, I also think Dr. Crausman probably also got the memo that the L&M-Westerly buy-out deal needed to happen.
Look, I’ll say again that I’m glad Westerly Hospital is being
saved. However, given the issues that L&M Hospital brings with it, the
community’s job is not over. The coalition that saved Westerly Hospital will
now need to turn its attention toward making sure that L&M doesn’t just
bleed Westerly Hospital to death.