By Ari Burack
April 19, 2008
Disability rights groups announced Friday they have reached a settlement with Northern California’s Sutter Health to improve hospital access and services for disabled patients.
The agreement settled a class-action lawsuit filed in 2006 asking the health care group to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“While people expect that hospitals and other medical environments will be accessible to people with disabilities, this is often not the case,” said Melissa Kasnitz, an attorney at the Berkeley-based Disability Rights Advocates who helped negotiate the settlement.
“We are extremely pleased with the commitments being made by Sutter, which, when implemented, will make it a leader in access in the health care industry,” Kasnitz said.
“We were actually very pleased in working collaboratively with disability rights advocates to address our shared interests,” said Sutter attorney and Director of Health Risk Bonnie George.
The agreement requires Sutter to make improvements to all of its Northern California hospitals and outpatient clinics, including its 17 hospitals in the greater Bay Area.
The mandated improvements include wheelchair ramps and indoor wheelchair access; wheelchair accessible medical equipment and exam tables; interpreters for those with hearing or speech impediments; alternative audio or Braille formats for printed hospital material; improvements to disabled parking; and training for hospital staff.
According to George, the hospital group has up to 10 years to complete the improvements and has already begun their implementation. Some of the architectural modifications may take the longest to complete, she said.
Though the price tag is still to be determined, George said, “We are committed to complying.” Some of the changes can be made as Sutter also complies with a separate state-mandated earthquake retrofit of hospitals, she said.
Linda Dardarian, of the Oakland-based law firm Goldstein, Demchak, Baller, Borgen and Dardarian, and co-counsel on the settlement, said she hoped “these sweeping and systemic changes can be a model for other health care providers as well.”
“A lot of hospitals and clinics are aging,” Dardarian said. “For hospitals that were built before 1980, disabled access wasn’t a consideration,” she said.
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