Nurses and healthcare advocates picketed outside San Francisco General Hospital Thursday
to protest cuts to public healthcare services.
Photo by John Han
By John Han
March 14, 2008
Nurses, healthcare advocates and elected officials held a rally outside San Francisco General Hospital Thursday to protest a series of service cuts to the city’s public healthcare system.
The city’s workers compensation clinic, located in the hospital, is slated for closure today.
The city’s Department of Public Health (DPH), which scheduled the shut down, claims the clinic does not generate enough revenue and plans to outsource the services to private hospitals including California Pacific Medical Center, Kaiser, and St. Francis.
San Francisco General Hospital Occupational Health Service Medical Director Stephen Born opposes the cuts. He said the decision to outsource services to the private sector will cost the city more money, arguing profit-driven incentives will drive up costs.
“We don’t bring in enough revenue just because we don’t charge the same amount that other people charge,” Born said. “There is a fee schedule, but the other clinics are experts at manipulating the fee schedule and charging for lots of additional services which are not necessarily needed.”
Born says the clinic’s “billing problem” can also be attributed to services that the clinic provides at no cost to the City, such as free case management to patients seeking advice on workers compensation claims.
He said patients being treated under worker compensation claims by private hospitals will result in longer wait times, higher costs, and loss of worker productivity.
San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkirimi, who attended the picket, said DPH has not conducted an audit to justify its plan to eliminate the clinic. Rather, he said, outsourcing has become a trend to privatize city services.
“All the foundational data that we’ve seen suggests that this clinic is worthy of saving and retaining,” Mirkarimi said. “It does more to the benefit of the city and the city workers than does cutting it.”
He added, “If the clinic closes tomorrow, we’ve now privatized the one last remaining public clinic in San Francisco, so that’s a significant milestone. All the other clinics have been outsourced, and they have now been privatized. This is the last of the publicly run clinics.”
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 7-3 Tuesday to authorize funding of the workers compensation clinic for the remainder of the fiscal year. However DPH is expected to move forward today with the clinic’s closure.
Additional service cuts to mental health, oral surgery and elective surgery is expected to begin in April.
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