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CITY COUNCIL
COMMITTEE OPENS HEARING INTO BETHANY HOSPITAL CONTROVERSY
Opponents Call for Study of Impacts Before
Bethany Ends 85 Years as Full-Service Hospital for West
Side’s Poor and Uninsured
 The
growing conflict over the fate of Bethany Hospital surfaced
at City Hall Tuesday, when a coalition of West Side
religious leaders and community organizations urged City
officials to conduct a probe into the threatened closure of
key hospital services.
Appearing at a
hearing held by the City Council Committee on Health, West
Side activists urged Aldermen to authorize a study of the
impacts that the Bethany cuts would inflict on city
residents and neighboring hospitals. The hearing comes amid
a grassroots outcry against Advocate Health Care’s plan to
close Bethany’s obstetric and psychiatric units while
sharply curtailing its emergency room care.
Two weeks ago,
more than 250 West Side residents gathered in a South
Lawndale church to condemn the cuts, which Advocate
announced in late January and intended to make effective on
March 1st. The cuts are part of a larger plan to
convert Bethany into a long-term care facility. The
hospital’s substance abuse program would also be eliminated
under the proposed conversion.
“Under
Advocate’s plan, Bethany Hospital – as we know it today –
will cease to exist,” said Rev. Robin Hood of the
Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now
(ACORN). “There will be no OB/GYN treatment, no mental
health program, no substance abuse program and no
full-service emergency room. So let’s be clear: A
long-term care facility is not a community hospital. And if
Advocate goes ahead with this conversion, Bethany will
resemble its current self in name only.”
Critics charge
that the proposed cuts are particularly jarring to a West
Side community plagued with some of the city’s most
intractable health problems. Hospitalization rates on the
West Side are twice the city average for mental illness and
three times higher for substance abuse.
“Many West Side
residents need precisely the kind of care that will no
longer be available at Bethany Hospital,” said Pastor Steven
Greer of Christian Valley Missionary Baptist Church in South
Lawndale. “Many of residents in our communities are poor
and uninsured – the same population that Advocate, as a
non-profit hospital system, is required by law to
accommodate.”
In fact,
Advocate has parlayed its non-profit status into an
estimated $75 million in annual tax exemptions. In exchange
for those hefty subsidies, Advocate is required to provide
low-cost or free health care to the indigent. But the
Bethany conversion would flout that obligation by reducing
needed services. It also strays from the assurances
Advocate officials made to the City Council last year when
they indicated that Advocate was maintaining its commitment
to Bethany.
“If Advocate
tries to make these cuts at Bethany, it will betray not only
its commitment to the West Side, but its word to the City
Council,” said Pastor Marshall Hatch of New Mount Pilgrim
Baptist Church and Rainbow/PUSH.
Meanwhile,
Advocate has attempted to curry favor with West Side leaders
by offering a $10 million community health fund to replace
the services it would eliminate at Bethany. But coalition
members warned that that figure is far less than what
Advocate can afford to spend on the West Side.
“One of the
reasons why Bethany has struggled financially is because
Advocate has been spending virtually all of its capital
resources on its hospitals in white, suburban areas, while
hospitals in minority areas are left to decay,” said Pastor
Gregory Livingston of Mandell United Methodist Church and
the West Side Health Crisis Coalition.
Livingston
referred to research by the SEIU Hospital Accountability
Project documenting that Advocate has spent $605 million on
capital improvements at its four suburban hospitals over the
past decade, compared to only $47 million at its four city
facilities. |
