Saving San Leandro Hospital 5: Write the Board of Supervisors

-
Next Tuesday, July 14th, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors will be discussing the future of San Leandro Hospital. Prior to Tuesday, it is important that we contact the Supervisors and let them know that the planned closure of San Leandro Hospital by Sutter Health will have a significant, negative impact on public health in Alameda County.

Below is email message I sent today to the Supervisors. Please craft your own message or feel free to use the arguments I made in your message to the Supervisors.

The email addresses for the Supervisors are:

scott.haggerty@acgov.org; gail.steele@acgov.org; nate.miley@acgov.org; keith.carson@acgov.org; alice.lai-bitker@acgov.org; shawn.wilson@acgov.org; chris.gray@acgov.org; alison.lewis@acgov.org; seth.kaplan@acgov.org; rodney.brooks@acgov.org

I have been told that not all Supervisors read their email on a regular basis. Therefore, the list includes the chief of staff for each Supervisor.

Please forward this message onto friends and family across the county, and add your city to your message. It is important that the Supervisors see that residents throughout the county are concerned about this issue.

Now is the time to speak up and influence the decision of the Supervisors. Thank you for your support of San Leandro Hospital.

-----------------

Dear Supervisors:

San Leandro Hospital provides the primary acute care in San Leandro, a city of 80,000. The emergency room at the hospital annually serves over 25,000 patients from San Leandro, Oakland, Hayward and other communities.

As you are aware, Sutter Health operates San Leandro Hospital and has announced its intention to close the facility on September 30, 2009. Another healthcare provider, Prime Healthcare, has made a viable proposal to takeover San Leandro Hospital and continue acute care services. However, Sutter Health is refusing to cooperate.

Instead, Sutter Health is seeking to sell the facility to the Alameda County Medical Center (ACMC). ACMC, in turn, has stated its intention to close the emergency room at San Leandro Hospital and transfer the rehabilitation center currently at Fairmont Hospital to San Leandro Hospital.

Closure of San Leandro Hospital will have a sharp, negative impact on public health in San Leandro and across the county:

1) San Leandro Hospital employs over 500 persons who live throughout the county. The loss of these jobs would come at the worst possible time for our county economy. Unemployment in the county stands at nearly 12%, and the county government is facing an unprecedented fiscal crisis.

2) The loss of the emergency room at San Leandro Hospital increases the likelihood hospitals in Oakland, Castro Valley and Hayward will go on diversion at peak times, jeopardizing patient safety. When a heart attack or stroke occurs, every minute is precious. In turn, as acute service capacity is taxed in the middle of the county, a negative, ripple effect will be felt in areas to the north (Berkeley and Albany) and south (Newark, Union City and Fremont).

3) While to date most persons that contracted the swine flu have recovered, over 170 persons have died in the U.S., including two in Alameda County. The first wave of 1918 flu too caused few deaths. It was then followed by a different form of the virus that killed 50 million persons worldwide.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has warned state and local officials to plan for the worst-case scenario of the virus reappearing with renewed strength this fall. If the swine flu should return in force, thousands of county residents will require hospitalization. Alameda County will need every hospital bed it has right at the time Sutter plans to close San Leandro Hospital.

Accordingly, I request that you keep San Leandro Hospital open. I recognize that Fairmont Hospital is need of a seismic retrofit. However, you should direct ACMC to either solve the earthquake safety issues at Fairmont Hospital or continue to operate the emergency room at San Leandro Hospital along with offering rehabilitation care. ACMC should not solve one problem by creating another.

Alternatively, you could direct ACMC to rescind its offer to Sutter Health and allow Prime Healthcare to negotiate with Sutter Health for transfer of operations at San Leandro Hospital.

Thank you for addressing this important public health issue for our county and ensuring that emergency and acute care at San Leandro Hospital continues.

Stephen Cassidy
San Leandro

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Looking Back: Measure B Transformed San Leandro Public Schools

-
Image
Our tax dollars can make a real difference in the lives of our children and prosperity of a community. Twelve years ago San Leandro High School was grossly overcrowded leading to discipline problems and undermining academic performance, no theater in the school district existed for student performances, and many restrooms at schools were in such poor condition that the students would not use them. That all changed in August 2006 when the School Board voted to place Measure  B on the ballot. The largest school construction bond in San Leandro’s history, Measure B received overwhelming support and led to the physical transformation of San Leandro public school (combined with the passage of two subsequent bond measures and one earlier measure). With better public schools, San Leandro has become a more desirable city to live, helping attract and retain families who previously would have never moved to San Leandro or moved away when the children were in middle school. Here is a
Read more

How Juan Gonzalez won the San Leandro Mayor's office at the end of the counting of votes

-
Image
On November 18, 2022, the Alameda County Registrar of Voters released the vote count for nearly all votes cast in the November 2022 general election. After being behind for the entire vote count, Juan Gonzalez effectively won the race.  How did this happen? First, from election night through 11/17, the Registrar had reported a total of 13,746 first choice ballots in the Mayor's race. On 11/18, the number of votes reported increased by 6,436 to 20,185 total votes. That was a nearly 47% jump in the reported votes. Another way of looking at the data is that prior to 11/18, all previous vote counts released by the Registrar did not include roughly one-third of the votes that were cast in the race. Second, Gonzalez  decisively took the lead in the the first choice ballots that were released by the Registrar on 11/18. Gonzalez took these votes by 39% to 33% margin. With the exception of the first vote count released by the Registrar on election night right after the polls closed when Br
Read more

San Leandro's Unsustainable City Budget

-
Yesterday, I attended a meeting of the San Leandro City Council Finance Committee. The committee consists of Mayor Santos and Councilmembers Prola and Gregory. Gregory was absent. In short, if significant action is not taken, the city will burn through all of its reserves, including eventually reserves for natural disasters and other emergencies. By 2015, San Leandro could join the City of Vallejo in declaring bankruptcy. Summary of Finance Committee Presentation Perry Carter, the Interim Finance Director, gave an update on the budget. In analyzing a budget, you need to examine at least three years of data - the previous, current and next fiscal years. Carter first reported on the "preliminary actual" numbers for the fiscal year which just ended on June 30, 2009. Illustrating how quickly the city finances collapsed last year, the original city budget for fiscal year 2008-09 assumed $76.2 million (hereafter simply "M") in revenues and $81.6 M in expenditures.
Read more