Braddock Hospital closed and the residents of the area were jumping up and down about how UPMC was only interested in profits and not the needs of the poor people in Braddock. The people of Braddock weren’t watching as their hospital stopped being profitable and went into the red. The people will not have a hospital just down the street anymore. But should they have been surprised? What has happened to our health care system generally and our hospitals specifically?
St. Johns General Hospital went out of business a few years ago. It changed its name to St. Johns ADR Center before it closed but nobody thought much of the name change or the change in services. The McClure Avenue hospital is nothing but a vacant lot now.
Divine Providence Hospital went out of business also. Well, it didn’t go out of business exactly, it lost the Divine Providence Sisters, changed its name a few times and it is more than a vacant lot so I guess it has not gone the way of St. Johns yet.
Before we go the way of Braddock we should start paying attention. Should we be looking at Suburban General Hospital, I mean Allegheny General Hospital Suburban Campus, or is it Drexel Campus? How many beds does the “Campus” maintain now and how many did they maintain 20 years ago?
Today more ambulances pass Suburban Campus for Allegheny General on the northside or UPMC in Oakland. Some-times emergency cases that would come to Suburban go to Passavant in the North Hills. We have lost the cardiac rehab facilities and who knows what else. The reason the ambulances are by-passing Suburban is because of what cases the hospital is prepared to handle. What the hospital is prepared to handle is dictated by the management of Allegheny General Hospital.
The time to think about what is going on at Suburban is now, not when the emergency room closes. We can’t be like the people of Braddock and object when the facility doesn’t make enough money to support what use to be a 200 bed hospital. We can’t claim it is greed on the part of the hospital when it isn’t profitable anymore. Businesses must make money or they can’t exist and that includes hospitals.
The facility is changing, our general hospital doesn’t exist anymore. The question is, will it be a hospital for long or is it on the way to being a big doctors office? I think the AGH management team needs a 20 Week Challenge on being honest about what is going on with our hospital, or did they tell us when they changed the name to Campus?
