Daughters of Charity Sale to Prime Healthcare

allnurses Guide · Jan 6, 2015

Health care workers protest sale of St. Francis Medical Center

LYNWOOD, Calif. (KABC) --

Health care workers rallied together at a hearing Monday regarding the sale of St. Francis Medical Center and other hospitals to Prime Healthcare Services.

The United Healthcare workers union members oppose the sale to Prime Healthcare. Their concerns are that if Prime Healthcare takes over jobs and salaries may be cut...

... But the California Nurses Association, which has negotiated a new contract with Prime Healthcare, is pushing for the approval of the sale.

The association said the for-profit hospital chain is the lifeline St. Francis needs to keep its doors open.

"We're here because we love our jobs, we love doing it and taking care of our patients. We want them to be taken care of properly, and that's our main goal is to take care of them properly," said Jackye Rogers, member of the California Nurses Association...

... Because the hospitals are non-profit and would be sold to a for-profit company, the final approval must go through the state attorney general's office. The decision is expected sometime in February...

Health care workers protest sale of St. Francis Medical Center. | abc7.com

allnurses Guide · Jan 9, 2015

Hospitals' sale: Prime is the only buyer who can keep facilities open

For decades, registered nurses at Daughters of Charity Health System have outlasted wars, pestilence and even earthquakes to fulfill their mission of serving the indigent and the poor in the Bay Area and Southern California. No one alive can recall a time care was not available at the local hospitals....

... Daughters of Charity hospitals face the threat of bankruptcy and possible closure as soon as June unless California Attorney General Kamala Harris approves a sale to the leading bidder, Prime Healthcare...

... "How can we close O'Connor Hospital," said Maria Canonizado, a registered nurse at O'Connor, "where one quarter of the babies in the San Jose area were born, there were almost 5,000 emergency room visits in the last year, is a stroke center and accepts many of the community's most acutely ill patients?"

Or risk the loss of St. Louise Regional Hospital, the only hospital serving Gilroy whose closure would force the nearly 24,000 patients who went to its ER last year to travel 25 miles to get to the next nearest hospital.

That's why the California Nurses Association and its 1,800 members who work in Daughters of Charity hospitals are working so hard to support the proposed sale to Prime, the only bidder that has pledged, and signed an agreement to keep all six hospitals open and preserve their vital health services for at least five years.

Prime has also agreed to pay off nearly $750 million in tax-exempt bonds, pension and other debts and commit an additional $150 million to hospital improvements.

Nurses are not standing alone in this fight. We're joined by the Sierra Club, Food and Water Watch, Consumer Watchdog, the National Organization for Women, NAACP and countless patients and community residents who know how vital it is to retain out community hospitals.

Those who oppose the sale can point to only one other bidder, Blue Wolf Capital, a Wall Street turnaround firm that specializes in "restructuring" troubled businesses and cutting core services for a quick resale and hefty profit.

It has no experience in the health care industry, unless you count their 2008 investment in a Chicago laundry that cleans linens for area hospitals. Unlike Prime, Blue Wolf has made no commitment to keep open our community hospitals...

Hospitals' sale: Prime is the only buyer who can keep facilities open - San Jose Mercury News

caliotter3 · Jan 9, 2015

Following this story with interest, hits close to home.

toomuchbaloney · Jan 9, 2015

So the only other bidder was a Mitt Romney/Bain type of group which will just strip profit out of the pieces of the system and throw the rest away?

allnurses Guide · Jan 9, 2015

So the only other bidder was a Mitt Romney/Bain type of group which will just strip profit out of the pieces of the system and throw the rest away?

A Hedge Fund.

Prime Healthcare is a for-profit that had made promises to keep charity care, ERs and other specialties open for five years.

CNA/NNU RNs asked the Attorney General to require ten years for the ERs.

The St. Francis of Lakewood is the only ER left in the area since the King Drew county hospital was closed for unsafe conditions in 2004 and Tenet closed Daniel Freeman in 2006.

Cardiac and Trauma patients could die on the way to the nearest ER or Trauma Center if it closes.

We have excellent statutes and regulations in California.

The nurses at the hospitals need to make sure their employer obeys the law. That should ensure safe care.

allnurses Guide · Feb 2, 2015

Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and some Democrats oppose the sale od hospitals to Prime Healthcare.

Editorial Let Prime Healthcare buy Daughters of Charity's hospitals
Daughters of Charity Health System, a Catholic nonprofit that operates six hospitals primarily for poor and elderly Californians, is reaching the last bead on its fiscal rosary. The chain is losing money at an alarming rate and wants to sell itself to Prime Healthcare Services, but prominent Democrats and a powerful union have called on Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris to block the deal.
For all its faults, however, Prime remains the best hope for keeping the six hospitals open and their vital services operating. Harris should approve Prime's purchase with conditions designed to keep it from abandoning the Daughters' mission and abusing the healthcare system...
Daughters operates St. Francis and St. Vincent medical centers in Los Angeles County and four others in the Bay Area. There's a strong demand for the acute-care and trauma services they provide, and surrounding hospitals aren't equipped to handle the extra workload. That's true even in South Los Angeles, where a new Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital is set to open this year with about a third as many beds as St. Francis...
... The Daughters chose Prime because it would buy the system outright and assume its liabilities. It also pledged to keep the hospitals open and the services intact for at least five years while protecting the workers' pensions. Those are all important commitments, provided they are enforceable. What's troubling about Prime, though, is the tactics it has used to boost per-patient revenue and pull troubled hospitals out of the red. Among other things, critics accuse the company of canceling insurance contracts to increase out-of-network billing and diagnosing unusually high percentages of obscure and expensive ailments.
Some of Prime's critics argue that Harris shouldn't reward this behavior by approving the sale. But the people who rely on the six Daughters' hospitals don't care what Prime did while it was scratching out a foothold in the industry, before it could command favorable rates from insurers.
They care what it would do going forward. And so should Harris.
Under state law, the attorney general must consider whether the sale may significantly affect the availability or accessibility of healthcare services to the community and whether it's in the public interest.
The former criteria give Harris the right and the obligation to impose conditions on the sale that commit Prime to keeping the hospitals open and key services available for the long term.
The latter gives her the ability to impose conditions barring Prime from using its clout to gouge payers and requiring the company to support alternative payment systems to slow the growth of healthcare costs.
Prime believes it can turn the Daughters' hospitals around not just by collecting more from insurers, but also by cutting overhead and providing better, more efficient care. It should have the chance to do so...
Let Prime Healthcare buy Daughters of Charity's hospitals - LA Times

Ginger's Mom, MSN, RN · Feb 3, 2015

Steward Healthcare made same promises and ended up closing Quincy Hospital in MA. I would not believe it.

allnurses Guide · Feb 3, 2015

Tenet made similar promises and then tried to get away with closing the Marina Del Rey hospital anyway. Staff nurses from there and other facilities and the wife of one of the physicians held protests, wrote letters to the attorney general, and letters to the editor.

Because Tenet had signed an agreement before buying the hospital they were forced to keep it open.

That is why we are requesting the attorney general to stipulate the trauma center and other needed services must be continued.

I don't trust a promise, but a contract can be enforced.

Hospital Ordered to Stay Open
Hospital Ordered to Stay Open - Los Angeles Times

At the time they had no union. Soon the RNs voted for representation.

Facilities by Region | National Nurses United

caliotter3 · Feb 3, 2015

All of this shows one reason why nurses should remain aware of the big picture that they are a part of.

allnurses Guide · Feb 21, 2015

Harris approves sale of Catholic hospitals to Prime - with conditions

California Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris on Friday approved the hotly debated sale of a chain of six struggling Catholic hospitals â€” including two in Los Angeles County â€” but imposed strict conditions on how they will be managed.The requirements left the future of the Daughters of Charity Health System hospitals in doubt â€” at least for several days.

Prime Healthcare Services Inc. of Ontario said it would need days to review Harris' ruling before deciding whether to proceed with the purchase, which includes St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood and St. Vincent Medical Center near downtown Los Angeles...

... Harris said she would require Prime Healthcare to keep all of the hospitals open for 10 years â€” including four of them as acute-care hospitals â€” and insisted they provide the same level of charity care to indigent patients as Daughters of Charity had.

We will do a careful analysis and hope to reach a decision within a week,â€ said Dr. Kavitha Reddy Bhatia, vice president of clinical transformation for Prime Healthcare. She is the daughter of the company's founder, Dr. Prem Reddy. We very much remain committed to the future success of these hospitals.â€...

... Workers at St. Vincent Medical Center near downtown Los Angeles cheered the approval.

I hope that Prime carries on the tradition of helping the poor,â€ said Don Baisa, who works as a shuttle driver at St. Vincent. Lots of people need this place. It is in the heart of L.A.â€

Bill Holifield, who said he has worked at St. Vincent for 46 years, said news of the sale was a relief. It meant he, his co-workers and retirees would get to keep their pensions.

There are a lot of good people here,â€ he said. It would be a shame for us to close our doors.â€

Prime Healthcare's Bhatia said the requirement to keep the hospitals open so long in the face of an ever-changing industry has never been imposed on any other hospital acquisition in California history.â€...

... The proposed sale divided organized labor, with the California Nurses Assn. supporting it and the SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West lobbying Harris to block Prime Healthcare's ownership...

... Debra Amour, a nurse at Seton Medical Center in Daly City, called the decision a win for nurses across the state and urged Prime to accept the conditions placed upon the deal.

It's a really scary thing to not only have your job threatened but really your whole community threatened if your hospital closes,â€ she said. We are really happy about it.â€

Meanwhile, Santa Clara County government was disappointed by the decision.

Two of the six Daughters of Charity hospitals are in that county: one in San Jose, one in Gilroy.

Regardless of the conditions placed upon Prime Healthcare, the county believes that the decision jeopardizes the health of the county's neediest and most vulnerable residents by reducing their access to critical medical services,â€ the county said in a statement...

Harris approves sale of Catholic hospitals to Prime - with conditions - LA Times

allnurses Guide · Feb 21, 2015

CNA Statement On Sale Of Daughters Of Charity Hospitals

Feb. 20, 2015

California's largest nurses organization, the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United today issued the following statement on the conditional approval of the sale of six Daughters of Charity Health System (DCHS) hospitals in the Bay Area and Los Angeles that were "on life support," facing imminent bankruptcy, huge reductions in patient services, and closure...

"While we haven't reviewed the entire document, based on the provisions cited in the Attorney General's statement, we would hope that Prime will comply with these conditions which will keep the hospitals open just as nurses, nuns, patients and community residents have rallied to achieve," said CNA Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro.

CNA Statement On Sale Of Daughters Of Charity Hospitals - TheStreet