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Facilities may lose
By Donna Horowitz, STAFF WRITER, Oakland Tribune
Wednesday, January 29, 2003
Fairmont Hospital, community clinics and programs at Highland Hospital operated by the Alameda County Medical Center face closure due to $7 million in possible federal funding cuts.
The potential closures were outlined Tuesday by Melinda Paras, spokeswoman for the medical center.
On Monday night, the medical center board directed staff to begin drafting a list of program cuts and employee seniority lists in preparation for layoffs to make up the $7 million loss in "disproportionate share" money this fiscal year.
The funding covers a hospital's costs of serving a disproportionate number of low-income patients. The medical center gets a total of $34 million a year in disproportionate money.
"Fairmont (Hospital) could be back on the table, (as well as) all of our community-based clinics and the speciality clinics at Highland," Paras said.
"There could be potentially significant cutbacks at Highland. We're going to try not to affect the trauma center. Practically anything is else is game," she added.
The Fairmont Skilled Nursing Facility in San Leandro was threatened with closure last year due to earlier budget problems. But the facility remained open after community groups mounted a campaign to save it.
Paras said the staff will bring the possible facility closures back to the board in February, but it will take up to three months to prepare the seniority lists.
The employee lists will be compiled by job classification. Those with the longest tenure will have the most protection from layoffs.
"We're saddened we have to take this step," Paras said. "We've been avoiding it since the beginning of the year. We were hoping the problem would be remedied."
Supervisor Alice Lai-Bitker, who serves on the board's health committee, said she hadn't heard about the possible cuts, but noted that a public hearing must be held before any hospital facility can be closed.
"I want to hear more details," Lai-Bitker said. "Personally, it's very painful to hear that. I'm not saying they should or shouldn't do that. They know the operation."
Nancy Friedman, executive director of Vote Health, an Oakland health advocacy group, said she's disappointed that Fairmont Skilled Nursing Facility is once again in jeopardy. Her group led a drive to save the facility last year.
"I'm extremely worried that there will have to be service program cutbacks at the Alameda County Medical Center that is the result not only of (federal) cutbacks, but the statewide deficit," Friedman said.
The state's budget deficit, which could reach $35 billion, could cut an estimated 30,000 county residents from Medi-Cal. That would send more people to the medical center without any insurance coverage.
"There's only so much a medical center can take of society's unwillingness to provide to provide medical services for all of its residents," Friedman said.
But she said she's hopeful people will start paying attention to a bill being drafted that calls for a single-payer fund administered by the state to provide medical insurance for everyone.
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