Support sale of hospital
I recently read that 18 members of Congress oppose the sale of Saint Louise Regional Hospital as well as the other Daughters of Charity Hospitals to Prime Healthcare stating basically that it would be bad for the communities, patients and healthcare workers. I fail to see how this will be bad for the community, patients or workers. With Prime Healthcare we have assurances there will be no reduction in services, all pensions and retirement plans will be preserved and other benefits will be preserved as well.
There are rumors Prime Healthcare closes hospitals and sends them to bankruptcy; I can find no evidence of this having occurred to any Prime hospital. If the attorney general approves Prime Healthcare she can have conditions placed in the contract, which will further guarantee services to the community and benefits for the employees.
I saw no mention of what alternatives these politicians propose. From my understanding the options are very limited and all require the current owner to file bankruptcy. This is in no way better for anyone mentioned and will further alienate the hospital from the community, which it has faithfully served.
In regards to Blue Wolf (favored by SEIU leadership), I am aware of what they expect to offer employees. As a member of the California Nurses Association bargaining team, I saw firsthand what they intend to offer nurses. This includes numerous cuts in pay and benefits, elimination of the pension for nurses as well as changes to our healthcare.
I don’t believe the County of Santa Clara will be better. While the services may remain intact, a bankruptcy will be required and all DOCHS employees will be considered “new hires” and will have to bid against the “senior” employees already employed by the county for their jobs.
I am sure that I do not begin to understand all the politics involved with this sale and especially of this magnitude, but to be told the sale to Prime Healthcare is the worst option reeks of misinformation, bad polices and potential nepotism at best.
I work at Saint Louise Regional Hospital and I vote.
George F. Endress III, RN
Prime will improve services
As the last nurse out of St. 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 St. Louise Hospitals, the last 25 years at St. Louise, I can speak with authority regarding the population of over 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 home, 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 since 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 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.
In a life-threatening event, our patients don’t have an extra 30 minutes to get to the next 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 medications 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 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 does not have financing. They have NO history of managing hospitals. They will not honor pensions or labor contracts and plan to replace RN’s with nursing assistants and techs, which will lower the standard and quality of care.
Is sacrificing the health and well being of thousands of voters 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 elective 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 services provided.
Karen Ayers, R.N.
Gilroy and the Red Barn
I don’t know the economic costs or benefits of maintaining “Miller’s Red Barn” at Christmas Hill Park, but do know that Henry Miller and his empire, which was based in Gilroy, are central to Gilroy’s past and have lessons that are important for the future of Gilroy and elsewhere. Miller’s empire of land, water and livestock was unrivaled in U.S. history and has had a profound effect on how land and water are used in California today.
The paths of other historic figures who shaped our use of land and view of nature passed through Miller’s empire, and are linked to Gilroy. John Muir, whose writings and advocacy about the Sierra Nevada and our need for wilderness became the wellspring of the conservation movement and catalyst for forming our national parks, crossed through Miller’s lands on his way through Gilroy in 1868. Muir viewed the Sierra Nevada for the first time from Pacheco Pass soon after leaving Gilroy, inspired by the magnificent mountains and also by the beauty of spring wildflowers of the San Joaquin Valley. Much of the valley lands over which Muir gazed from Pacheco Pass was then owned or soon would be by Henry Miller, who was in the process of reshaping the land and river system in ways that are still integral to California’s world-leading agricultural but also to immense environmental challenges. Between the two of them, Miller and Muir greatly influenced how the lands of California are used, and each provides lessons that can inform our most difficult decisions about land and water today.
Linking coast and inland, industry and agriculture, city and wilderness, Gilroy is a unique crossroad intersection for society’s most important choices about land use, as it was when Miller developed the lands around Gilroy as the hub of a multi-state empire and when Muir made Gilroy his gateway to the Sierra wilderness. We still have highly productive agriculture even while the housing and business needs of Silicon Valley press ever harder. We still are surrounded by glorious, largely unspoiled natural areas and open spaces. How will we balance out the choices among these uses of our land and water in the future? “Miller’s Red Barn,” the surrounding Christmas Hill Park and DeBell Uvas Creek Preserve and the extended Hecker Pass corridor, including Gilroy Gardens, wineries and Miller’s retreat at Mt. Madonna, all weave together diverse land uses in a Gilroy landscape that can engage and inform Gilroy residents and visitors about our area and the choices we make about how to use it.
Gilroy has an opportunity to capitalize on its unique location and history for its own benefit and to inform a state, national, and even global dialogue about how land, water and other resources are used. Perhaps the Red Barn and the stories of Henry Miller and others of early California with ties to Gilroy can play a part in taking advantage of that opportunity.
George Fohner, Gilroy
