Next Step for SB 840 in Alameda County

Coalition Forms to Promote SB 840 Vote Health is working with other health care advocates to lobby for the passage of SB840. The first meeting is on: Tuesday, April 19, 6:30 pm Over 60 Health Center, 3260 Sacramento St. At Alcatraz, Berkeley Keep Alert Receive updates on SB 840 by subscribing to Senator Kuehl's Action Alert. Contact: Emily.Gold@sen.ca.gov.

Many local groups have already begun to organize support for the new single payer bill reintroduced by Sen. Sheila Kuehl. In order to better coordinate grassroots activities, an East Bay coalition is coming together to plan the campaign for this area, along the lines of last year's successful Measure A campaign committee. In addition to Vote Health, the Berkeley Gray Panthers, Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club, SEIU Local 616, EBASE, CAPA, Health Access, Supervisor Nate Miley's office and various East Bay organizations have expressed interest in working jointly. The first planning meeting will focus on further outreach to make the coalition more representative and discuss scheduling community forums to get the word out about how important this bill is for all the health care issues we face. We are already collectively getting support letters sent, making district office visits to state legislators, and getting new endorsements for SB 840.

For example, Vote Health, SEIU 616, CAPA (Ca. Physicians Alliance) and Health Care for All-Santa Clara collaborated on a district visit with Liz Figueroa's staff and were very encouraged by their response. This is the sort of cooperation that will strengthen our joint efforts to make sure this bill gets the attention it deserves!

Please keep in mind that this initial meeting is a working group of representatives from various organizations, so each group needn't send more than a few people. We have plenty of time to build large community gatherings - and hopefully we will come up with a jazzy name for the coalition! Send your representatives to the meeting on April 19 at 6:30 at the Over 60 Health Center, 3260 Sacramento St. in Berkeley, @Alcatraz Ave.

For further info, call the Vote Health line at (510)832-8683

Sutter Health Flunks Patient Care 101!

As widely reported in the local press, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center has been formally notified that it is at risk of losing its accreditation due to failures in patient care and record-keeping.

Inspectors from the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), an industry-based monitoring group that typically inspects hospitals every three years, noted, for example, that 80% of the Alta Bates Summit heart failure patients they reviewed received an important evaluation necessary for correct treatment. In contrast, 96% of patients at the state's top hospitals got this evaluation.

The majority of deficiencies cited deal directly with patient care, not paper-pushing: appropriate response to actual or potential adverse drug events and medication errors; pain assessment; equal care and treatment among patients; following approved protocols on the use of restraints on patients; steps taken to reduce risk of infections contracted during hospital stays; and so on.

Yet Alta Bates Summit Medical Center's Dr, John Gentile, vice president of medical affairs, told Bay Area media last November, when JCAHO issued its preliminary findings, that the problems cited by the survey involved "tiny, picayune documentation items" (San Francisco Chronicle, 11/13/04), JCAHO inspects 16,000 hospitals nationwide but few get to this point of preliminary denial of accreditation. Only 12 hospitals were issued preliminary denials in 2004. The next step for Sutter Health management is to appear before JCAHO's Review Hearing Panel to make its case for why Alta Bates Summit should not be denied accreditation.

For those of us who have lived many years in the East Bay and remember the outstanding reputations of Alta Bates and Summit Hospitals for excellent care, it's a sad reflection on what happens when local, community-based healthcare institutions get taken over by large chains like Sutter Health. Relationships with the unionized workforce are at an all-time low, as Sutter refuses to follow other Northern California hospital systems in establishing a core set of community standards, including safe staffing and staff training upgrades, along with basic worker rights to choose a union without employer interference.

Our community is badly served as well by discriminatory pricing and aggressive debt collection practices. In the past year patients have filed three class action lawsuits against Sutter for overcharging the uninsured and then sending them to collections when they are unable to pay their bills. While Sutter is technically non-profit and receives tens of millions of dollars in tax savings each year, it spent only 0.6% of net patient revenues on charity care during 2002, according to data from the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD), far less that the average nonprofit hospital in California.

Sutter Health also has a history of closing vital services upon acquiring local hospitals, such as the Pain Clinic for the chronically ill at Summit in 2002, only two years after promising to preserve and expand services for local residents. And in a number of communities Sutter has disbanded local hospital boards of directors, replacing them with a corporate board which effectively eliminates local input about how care is provided (Sacramento, Yolo and Placer counties).

Vote Health has joined with other community organizations clergy and elected officials to put pressure on Sutter Health to do the right thing. Stay tuned for future developments

Single payer bill advances in legislature

Sen. Sheila Kuehl's universal healthcare bill, SB 840, passed its first hurdle in the Senate Banking Committee on a straight party line vote. The next hearing is in Senate Health Wednesday, April 20, 1:30. The usual opponents, business and insurance company lobbyists, repeated their tired (and false) clichéeacute;s against the bill. Committee Chair Jackie Speier sharply criticized the California Chamber of Commerce, pointing out that it has no plan to address the health care crisis, "and when we do something, you spend 20 million dollars to undo it." Senator Speier was referring, of course, to the business community's campaign to defeat SB 2, the employer mandate to provide health care for workers.

Newsletter committee:
Kay Eisenhower, Brad Cleveland and Jim Forsyth.
Our thanks to CA Nurses Association for their help in producing this newsletter.