Hospital Monitor: Non Discrimination in Capital Investment Policies

ADVOCATE HEALTH CARE FACES INTERNAL RIFT OVER PLAN TO CLOSE BETHANY HOSPITAL SERVICES

Member Churches which Sponsor Advocate Health Care Testify Against Company Plan to Shutdown Hospital Service; Say Plan Would Perpetuate Company’s Racially-Biased Investment Practices

MARCH 24, 2006—Signaling an internal revolt within the religious institutions that control Advocate Bethany Hospital, members of the United Church of Christ (UCC) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church In America (ELCA) spoke out Friday against the controversial proposal to close major services at the West Side facility.

The UCC and the ELCA hold the majority of seats on the board of Advocate Health Care, which owns Bethany Hospital. The internal discord within the churches is the latest in a growing backlash against the proposal to convert Bethany from a community hospital into a long-term care facility.

In dramatic testimony at the West Side hearing, pastors from the two Churches said that the plan to eliminate Bethany’s OB/GYN treatment, mental health unit and substance abuse program – on top of its recent closure of the hospital’s full-service emergency room – will reinforce an ongoing pattern of racial discrimination in the way Advocate Health Care invests in its facilities.

“Advocate is closing urban hospitals—Ravenswood on the north side a few years ago, and Bethany now—and disinvesting in others on the south side, while continuing to expand or try to expand in affluent suburbs like Park Ridge and Tinley Park,” said Reverend Marilyn Pagan Banks, a minister of the United Church of Christ and co-pastor of Good News Community Church in Rogers Park. “We see the closure of Bethany Hospital as a pattern of health care apartheid and urge you to reject this application, and, as the State of Illinois, refuse to allow apartheid to operate in the state of Illinois.”

Advocate has spent $605 million on capital improvements at its hospitals serving predominantly white, affluent communities over the past decade compared to only $47 million at its four facilities which serve mostly low-income minority populations.

The religious leaders joined hundreds of West Side residents opposed to the Bethany cuts at a public hearing called by the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board (IHFPB). The IFHPB will rule on the proposed Bethany cuts on April 24.

Bethany, located in East Garfield Park, serves 67,000 West Side residents in neighborhoods plagued with health problems. Hospitalization rates on the West Side are twice the city average for mental illness and three times higher for substance abuse. Treatment for both those ailments would be eliminated at Bethany under Advocate’s plan.

Meanwhile, in some West Side neighborhoods, the mortality rate from assault averaged 192 percent higher than the city-wide average. But Advocate has already discontinued Bethany’s full-service emergency room, advising that potential patients seek emergency care at the chronically overcrowded Stroger Cook County Hospital several miles away.

“If Advocate Health Care goes forward with its plans to shut down vital services at Bethany Hospital, it will leave our whole community in critical condition,” said Pastor Steven Greer of Christian Valley Missionary Baptist Church in South Lawndale. “Our neighborhoods were already afflicted by widespread health care challenges, and the Bethany closure would injure us all over again.”

Opposition to the Bethany cuts erupted in January when Advocate announced the plan – less than a year after it had publicly assured West Side leaders that it was committed to operating the facility. Those misrepresentations brought a strong condemnation from a City Council Committee, which is considering a resolution calling for an investigation into the impacts of the Bethany cuts. The Cook County Board Health and Hospitals Committee unanimously adopted a similar measure.

Religious leaders on the West Side have mounted a strong campaign to save the hospital from the chopping block, turning out hundreds of local residents to rally against the closure at numerous public events. One of those forums was an IHFPB meeting last week, where more than 150 West Side residents protested a previous plan by state regulators to hold only one hearing on the Bethany cuts in the Loop, rather than in the community that the hospital serves. The Board ultimately bowed to their pleas.

Critics charge that the closure of major services at Bethany represents a betrayal of Advocate’s public obligations. As a non-profit, religiously affiliated hospital system, Advocate collects more than $75 million annually in tax breaks. In exchange it is required to provide community benefits, such as low-cost or free health care to the poor and uninsured.

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