Protest at St. John Medical Center after two primary care physicians fired for “lack of productivity”

UPDATE: Persons representing themselves as lawyers for University Hospitals and St. John Medical Center telephoned a coordinator of this Sunday’s rally outside St. John’s and threatened him and other event organizer with legal action in connection with the contents of this media advisory. Official response can be found at www.mobilizeohio.org.

Patients, physicians and health care activists to protest St. John Medical Center’s plans to eliminate primary care practices

Cuts would leave 2,500 patients without their trusted primary care physician

What: Rally at St. John Medical Center to protest the closing of two longtime primary care practices

When: 1 p.m., Sunday, May 2

Where: 29000 Center Ridge Road, Westlake, Ohio (across from the south entrance)

Who: Patients, citizens, and health professionals who object to the closure of two primary care practices that have served the community for over 20 years

Photo and video opportunity: Those attending the rally are being encouraged to carry signs saying, ’St. John’s is foreclosing on primary care practices creating medically homeless patients’; some will be inside large cardboard boxes, claiming them as their ’new medical homes.’

WESTLAKE ’ Patients, health care professionals, and area residents will gather across the street from St. John Medical Center next Sunday to protest the sudden closure of two primary care practices that have served the community for over two decades.

Two primary care physicians, including George Randt, M.D., were told on April 1 by the president of St. John Medical Center, Cliff Coker, that their employment contracts with Cuyahoga Physicians Network at the St. John West Shore Hospital were being terminated and that they will be laid off effective April 30 because they were not productive enough.

The decision made by St. John Medical Center to sever the relationship between approximately 2,500 patients and their primary care physicians will have unforeseen consequences for both patient and physician alike, and may have negative consequences due to the loss of the patients’ established medical homes. Many of the affected patients have been cared for by the same physician for over 20 years.

’Several months ago, at a staff meeting, the CFO of St. John’s told all of the physicians attending that the hospital could make a profit if the physicians would admit just one more Medicare patient a month,’ said Randt, who left the meeting questioning the moral justification and legal propriety of this request.

Randt said many of his patients have signed petitions, written letters and made phone calls to St. John’s executive officers demanding a reversal of the decision with no response.

Dr. Margaret Flowers, congressional fellow for the Physicians for a National Health Program, a group that favors a single-payer, Medicare-for-All health system, will speak at the May 2 event. Referring to the proposed layoffs, she said, ’This is what happens under our current fractured, money-driven system of health care financing. Doctors are required to see increasing numbers of patients and spend less time with them. ’

The most common way hospital executives measure physician productivity is the number of patients they see each hour, Flowers said, although some executives have been known to criticize doctors for not ordering a sufficient number of tests, even though such tests may not be medically warranted.

Flowers is one of the speakers attending the rally. Her colleague Dr. Carol Paris will be in attendance too. Invitations have also gone out to all of the patients who will be losing their medical home, as well as citizens throughout the area and legislators.

’What St. John’s board is doing is unacceptable,’ said Drew Smith of the Mobilize Ohio Movement, the group that is planning the rally. ’To leave 2,500 patients medically homeless because some don’t believe that primary care is profitable enough goes against everything in the hospital’s mission statement. It’s a terrible blow to the physician-patient relationship. These primary care practices should be reinstated immediately.’

Smith added: ’If we had a single, comprehensive health plan for everyone, which spent more money on providing care and less on administrative overhead, we wouldn’t be facing this kind of situation.’

The Mobilize Ohio Movement supports House Bill 159 (The Health Care for All Ohioans Act), which would establish a single-payer, Medicare-style health plan for all residents of Ohio from birth to death, with no out-of-pocket expenses, and would strive to ensure that every patient has a primary care physician.

St. John sent a letter out to all of the patients of the primary care practices dated April 19 stating their personal physicians would no longer be able to see them as of the end of the month. The letter failed to mention that the hospital was closing the practices for financial reasons.

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For more information:

Mobilize Ohio Movement, www.mobilizeohio.org

SPAN-Ohio, www.spanohio.org

Physicians for a National Health Program, www.pnhp.org

Healthcare-Now, www.healthcare-now.org