Will Your Community Lose Its Hospital?

By Anna Kirsch and Jim Anderson, AlterNet. Posted October 17, 2007.

All across the country, a new epidemic is threatening people's health -- the culprit is the closure of community hospitals and those most at risk are low-income and people of color.

"This is the hospital that I take my 94-year-old mother to. This is the hospital that I was born in ... this is the hospital that I take my nieces and nephews to, the hospital where most everyone in my community goes and where all my loved ones and family members have been and still get treated," said Jim Anderson, describing the Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo, N.Y., just one of many community hospitals across the nation that are slated to be shut down within the next year.

"This hospital is located in the heart of the black community here, and it serves any and everybody ... it has its problems, but the answer is not to shut it down," said Anderson, a New York correspondent for Poor Magazine and the PoorNewsNetwork (PNN), a grassroots media organization based in San Francisco dedicated to reframing the news and views around issues of racism and poverty.

I first heard Anderson speak in one of Poor Magazine's community newsroom meetings at the United States Social Forum in Atlanta this June, where he talked about the struggle he has faced in getting any sort of healthcare as a poor African-descendent man in this country.

As he spoke to crowd of folks struggling with poverty, racism and disability about the hospital closure crisis facing poor communities of color across the entire state of New York, one hand after another shot up in the air.

"The same thing is happening in ... New Orleans ... Nashville ... Philadelphia ... Los Angeles ... right here in Atlanta with Grady Memorial Hospital," folks from all over chimed in to share stories about their struggle to keep their community hospitals open.

Grady Memorial Hospital, which is the largest publicly funded hospital in the state of Georgia, was located just a few miles away from our meeting that day in Atlanta and is often referred to as the "only hospital that treats poor people."

Rev. Calvin E. Peterson, a formerly houseless, disabled man who was born at Grady Hospital in 1948 and also worked with the hospital on their accessibility plan, said that the entire poor, black community would be in an uproar if the state closed it down.

The hospital is facing mounting financial problems and could be closed by the end of the year if an agreement is not reached. This could leave thousands, such as Peterson, suffering and without a place to receive care.

Although Grady has been criticized by many for its inadequate services, if the state hospital could receive the much-needed funding -- that is currently being denied -- it could hire the necessary staff and make improvements.

Other folks expressed similar concerns for their own low-income communities all across the nation. Where would these people go for emergency treatment? What would happen to the hospital staff that had become an integral part of the community it served? Why couldn't a state-run "public" hospital get the necessary funding to treat residents?

As a person living without health insurance, I, like so many in this country, live in fear of facing any serious illness or accident, one that would put me in lifelong debt. Like Anderson and his family, I too am dependent on these community hospitals, and even though they are plagued with problems -- they are all we have.

Connecting the dots in Atlanta

"In Buffalo, some people are mistakenly thinking that this issue isn't touching anyone else, but in Atlanta I learned that this is not an isolated incident," said Anderson who explained that he believed the nationwide closure of hospitals serving communities of color is not a coincidence, but rather a calculated effort by the government to get rid of what it's calling a "surplus of unused hospital beds."

State governments all across the country are conducting "studies" largely behind closed doors to "restructure" healthcare facilities, which has resulted in numerous plans for closures and forced mergers.

For example, in New York, the Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century was created by the governor and is made up of 54 members, each appointed by either the governor, the senate or the speaker of the assembly. The commission was left with the task of "restructuring and rightsizing the healthcare industry" in the state and held most of tits meetings in secret -- a fact that has caused an uproar in local communities and caused two hospitals to sue.

With hardly any input from the community that would be the most affected by its decisions, such as the hospital workers themselves, the commission released dozens of recommendations in 2006 ultimately affecting the entire public hospital and nursing home system in New York. (The commission's full report can be read online.) In the Buffalo area alone, six hospitals -- almost all of which serve high needs communities of color, low-income people, disabled persons and seniors -- are slated for closure.

See more stories tagged with: hospitals, hospital closures

Anna Kirsch is a graduate of Poor Magazine's Race, Poverty and Media Justice Institute and is a PNN community journalist. Jim Anderson is race and poverty scholar, community activist, social justice advocate and PNN New York Correspondent.

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