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SAVED!
Fight to keep St. Joseph Hospital open succeeds; facility will become Sisters Hospital satellite
By John J. Hopkins Times
 | | STILL STANDING... St. Joseph Hospital, targeted for closing by a New York State commission, will remain open through at least 2011. The Catholic Health System and the New York State Department of Health reached an agreement, announced last week, that will see the hospital become a satellite campus of Sisters of Charity Hospital. (Times file photo) |
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St. Joseph Hospital will remain open as a reult of an agreement reached between the Catholic Health System and the New York State Department of Health that calls for the Harlem Road facility to operate under the sponsorship of Sisters of Charity Hospital.
The agreement, announced last week, reverses a November 2006 recommendation by the New York State Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century to close the facility. The recommendation became law on January 1, 2007.
Hospital officials learned of the decision at around 3 p.m. Thursday, St. Joseph Hospital President and CEO James Millard said, when the Department of Health (DOH) announced that St. Joseph will receive an $8 million HEAL-NY grant.
State Health Commissioner Richard F. Daines, M.D. said in a media release that the grant supports "closure activities" allowing Sisters to operate acute and emergency services at the St. Joseph site at least until June 2011.
Under the agreement, St. Joseph Hospital will surrender its operating certificate and its 208 licensed beds, including 127 beds currently in operation. The facility will im mediately reopen as the eastern campus of Sisters of Charity Hospital with 125 unused beds from the Sisters operating license.
The end result will be a reduction from 621 licensed beds between the two hospitals to 413 beds under the Sisters Hospital operating certificate at the Main Street, Buffalo and Harlem Road campuses.
All of the hospital's roughly 800 jobs will be preserved, ensuring it remains a major employer in Cheektowaga.
The agreement was trumpeted by Catholic Health System officials and area politicians as a win-win situation.
"It's great news and it's been a long time coming," Millard told the Times. "We got the word officially on Thursday and people are just ecstatic here."
CHS President and CEO Joseph D. McDonald said the health system proposed to the DOH an alternative to closing the hospital about eight months earlier.
However, McDonald said that DOH officials were reluctant to hear alternative proposals to closing the facility, one of three locally and nine statewide, targeted by the commission.
Often called the "Berger" commission, named after its chairman, Stephen Berger, the group's purpose was to review health care facilities across the state and make recommendations to improve health care while halting spiraling Medicaid costs.
"It took some time for this idea to mature in the state's mind," McDonald told the Times about the health system's proposal.
McDonald said "strong" advocates including Congressman Brian Higgins, Senators William Stachowski and Dale Volker and Assemblyman Dennis Gabryszak were invaluable in their push to remain open.
The Health Department release indicates that closing St. Joseph, along with Kaleida Health System's Millard Fillmore Hospital in Buffalo and DeGraff Memorial in Niagara County, will have an "extensive impact" on emergency services and long term care.
"Careful DOH review has determined that these two mandates be reviewed over the next few years in order to protect patient health and safety," Daines said. "St. Joseph serves an extensive aging population, and the assessments we are conducting will further inform the future need for services at the St. Joseph's site."
Millard said he believes that the 28,000 visits to St. Joseph's stateof the-art $10 million emergency department, which opened in 2005, also helped influence the reversal.
A memo from McDonald informing St. Joseph employees of the decision was quickly distributed Thursday, but many knew before the memo reached them.
"Good news spreads pretty quickly," Millard added. "Walking through the hallway, people were thrilled."
A date for the change has not been determined, but McDonald said he hopes the CHS is poised to make the conversion by December 31.
The health system will also enter into settlement discussions to resolve the two lawsuits it enacted against the state to keep St. Joseph open.
McDonald also believes that the Harlem Road facility will remain open beyond 2011.
"I'll make sure that the settlement agreement is very clear before we sign it," McDonald told the Times.
My understanding is that in 2011 the state wants to come back and make sure we've done the reconfiguration that we said we're going to do."
Millard and McDonald said there are several details that must be worked out before the hospitals merge.
"How do you bring two fairly large organizations together?" Millard observed. "It's going to be a lot of work."
Millard pointed to legal issues, finances and merging human resources as examples of challenges that must be addressed.
"It is just as big a change on the folks at Sister's Hospital as it is on St. Joe's," McDonald said. "When you bring organizations together, it's not one organization prevailing, it's
new series of cultures. Both organizations have to be open to and accept changes. It's going to require a lot of emotional resiliency."
Another unanswered question is will the St. Joseph name remain with the hospital?
McDonald said he hopes to retain the name in some form, but that the decision sits with the Franciscan Sisters of St. Joseph- the hospital's religious sponsors- and the Buffalo Diocese.
"My bias is to keep the St. Joe's legacy attached to that campus," McDonald added. "I'm pretty confident that the legacy of St. Joseph and the Franciscan Sisters will be there in a lot of ways."
The CHS will maintain a full-service facility at the Harlem Road site, including inpatient acute care and surgical services, its emergency department, outpatient medical and surgical services and a full array of diagnostic and rehabilitative services.
In addition, the health system will study the addition of new services, including the development of specialized geriatric services, to meet the growing needs of the surrounding community.
"We do that now," Millard said, noting that St. Joseph has a "significantly older" patient population compared to the average in the county, state and nation. "We want to make sure we're focusing some services on that population we serve; a focus of geriatric services even more so than in the past."
A new senior vice president for marketing will likely examine the community to help the hospital determine the services needed.
McDonald said the health system will work with community agencies who assist seniors in the area to determine St. Joseph's role. A planned PACE program (Program of All Inclusive Care for the Elderly) at the former Our Lady of Victory Hospital in Lackawanna may pave the way for a similar program at the St. Joseph site.
Health system officials stated that the compromise "clearly meets" the recommendations of the Berger Commission and "keeps the door open" for New York State to receive $1.5 billion in federal funds under the federal-State Healthcare Reform Partnership.
"We believe this plan is an enormous victory for our community, including the large number of seniors in Cheektowaga and families throughout the growing eastern suburbs who rely on the hospital for care," said McDonald. "St. Joseph Hospital is a critical community resource and our action plan preserves patient care, saves money and jobs, avoids disruption of services and maintains the campus as an economic engine in the community."
The hospital has a $143 million annual economic impact on the area.
Millard praised the employees and staff at St. Joseph Hospital for remaining upbeat since the commission recommended closing the facility nearly 14 months ago.
"There was a pretty significant cloud hanging over their heads for the last year," Millard observed. "To have that lifted was great. You could see in their faces that they were relieved. Now they can get on with the business of taking care of patients."
The Berger Commission's November 2006 announcement triggered an outcry against the decision.
Critics blasted the commission's stated reasons- an overall loss of money by hospitals statewide, aging facilities and unsustainable skyrocketing Medicaid costs- noting that St. Joseph does not contribute to any of these problems.
They pointed out that the hospital operates in the black, has a stateof the-art emergency department and fewer than two percent of its patients rely on Medicaid.
Rallies supporting the hospital were held, and attracted thousands of residents and employees. A "We Believe" campaign launched by the CHS resulted in nearly 60,000 supporters signing a petition urging Governor Eliot Spitzer to overturn the closing recommendation.
"That certainly made people stand up and take notice," Millard said. "We've been busier since (the November 2006) announcement and we were busier in 2007 than we were in 2006."
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