By Linda Hamilton, RN, BSN
Attorney General Lori Swanson deserves the gratitude of all Minnesotans for hitting the brakes on the possible Sanford Health-Fairview Health Services merger that meant a takeover of our University of Minnesota Medical Center. Taxpayers can have confidence that the educational, training, and research facilities they’ve paid for and donated to will stay in local hands. Minnesota patients can rest easy that the mission to do research and care for the toughest cases will remain a priority.
That said, however, we can’t relax that the continued corporatization of health care in the state won’t continue or that patient care will continue to look very different in the future.
A patient could criss-cross the state from Thief River Falls to Monticello to Moose Lake to Marshall and find that the “local” hospital is now part of a chain in the hands of one of the major players in the state: Sanford, Avera, Essentia, Mayo, or Fairview. Hospital boards continue to struggle to balance budgets while maintaining care for local residents, and the offer of new capital with efficient controls and partnerships with large medical hubs can look pretty attractive. Trouble is, hospitals can find themselves years into a partnership agreement when they find that the promises don’t match the reality.
In Sandstone, for example, the hospital board had to have a showdown with Essentia Health to change the 15-year-old contract. The North Pine Area Hospital District board repeatedly complained about the corporation’s refusal to make the much-needed improvements to the 50-year-old hospital waiting rooms and clinics.
Residents didn’t appreciate that the hospital’s two local administrators were shown the door. Sandstone city officials even had to fight the company’s unsolicited buyout of their hospital.
In Virginia, fears of loss of control led the city leaders to ensure that the hospital would be a secondary hub for Essentia with enough resources to care for residents from Ely, International Falls, and Cook to keep the facility open and ensure patients wouldn’t have to drive to Duluth for good care.
Before another local hospital becomes another link in the chain, hospital board members need to ask what will happen to patient care. Will procedures continue to be performed locally or will patients literally face a long road ahead to receive care at a flagship hospital?
Will our hospital continue to be the family hospital where our family is cared for the doctors and nurses who are our neighbors who we trust? Will the hospital board and CEO be in church with us and have a commitment to our community? Will our local doctor lose his/her right to independent practice essentially tying them to corporate strings like a marionette that tell him or her what to do and when?
Patients may also wonder if they’ll continue to see their local doctor who may work for a different medical group or if the local experienced nurses they’ve grown accustomed to seeing will still have a job if a corporate takeover happens.
In Minnesota, it may be easy to think that these things would never happen. After all, our hospitals have to be non-profits, and we brag about our top-shelf level health care. Non-profit or for-profit, it doesn’t matter. The style of hospital management is turning customers into numbers and patients into products.
Corporate health care takes away the uniqueness that makes our hometown special. When we are sick or having our babies, we want excellent care given by doctors and nurses who care in our community. The local hospital is an investment that was made by our communities years ago by us the taxpayers, by us in the faith communities, and by many of us who generously gave over the decades. We must question and we must speak now before our small hospitals become just feeders for the large corporate healthcare industry.
Thank you Attorney General Swanson, but regulators on the state and local level need to keep track of who owns the hospitals.