Next Task Force Meeting

November 8

5:00 p.m.

Friend Room, Sawyer Free Library, Gloucester

Chaired by Senator Bruce Tarr

Next Partners Meeting

When is a hospital no longer a real hospital?  Well, Addison Gilbert Hospital is getting perilously close. 

 AGH now operates only 32 acute care medical-surgical beds, all on Steele I.  The physicians known as "hospitalists", employed by Northeast to provide all the medical care for in-patients, in place of their own doctors, further limit the number of patients they will cover at AGH to only 24.  Patients who could, and should, be treated at AGH are instead "diverted" to Beverly. 

 Surgeons and anesthesiologists at Beverly Hospital are allowed to simply refuse to come to Gloucester.  Not surprisingly, the number of surgeries at AGH has dropped.  Northeast then uses that lower volume of OR (operating room) cases as grounds for further cutting "after hours" surgery. 

 The internal memo of Northeast, from July of this year, stating the policy of "no surgeries after 6PM or on weekends" at AGH was not the first, but the second, documentation that Northeast was eliminating critical surgical services at AGH.  In 2004, minutes of a meeting of OR staff at Beverly Hospital said virtually the same thing.  That document was shared with Senator Tarr's Task Force and with state officials.  But still the money flows. 

 Over the past 3 years, Northeast has been granted close to $2 million from the state specifically to fund 24/7 surgery and other emergency services at AGH.  This money comes from a "distressed hospitals fund" yet Northeast has enjoyed financial surpluses of between three and eleven million dollars over the past four years.  For the third quarter of this year, Northeast has a surplus of $7 million. 

 If we don't stop the dismantling of critical services at AGH now, the danger of being left with nothing more than an "urgi-care center" at AGH is very real.  In order for any hospital to have a full-service Emergency Department, the state requires that there be, on the premises, all of these 8 critical services:

            1.    Inpatient medical/surgical beds;

            2.    Critical care (or ICU) beds;

            3.    24-hour availability of a qualified physician and other qualified professional .staff

            4.    Laboratory services including hematology, chemistry and blood gas

                   analysis;

            5.    Radiology services capable of providing the necessary support for the

                   Emergency Room;

            6.    Surgical services including adequate operating room facilities immediately

                   Available for life threatening situations;

            7.    Post-anesthesia recovery services;

            8.    Readily available access to a blood bank.

This is the absolute minimum this community is entitled to expect from Northeast which benefits from the enormous wealth of AGH, not only at the time of the merger but continuing to this day with income from investments, real estate and other AGH assets entrusted to them.  That wealth helped to underwrite the recent $37 million expansion at Beverly and the planned $20 million ambulatory center planned in Danvers. Meanwhile AGH buildings are demolished or "adapted" to any uses other than acute hospital services.  Adding insult to injury, the Northeast "Trustees" refuse to even meet with this community to discuss our needs and their plans for AGH.

 We need immediate action by state and local officials.  At a minimum, we need a written guarantee from Northeast that the services needed for a full-service emergency room at AGH will be protected.  Without that, our hospital is at risk of becoming nothing more than a medical transfer station.  We deserve better.