Bishop Kmiec says critical health services at stake

The Catholic Health System www.chsbuffalo.org today reiterated its commitment to fight the recommended closure of St. Joseph Hospital through any and all available channels.

“We will not abandon the people of Cheektowaga, Lancaster, Depew, East Buffalo and the surrounding suburbs who have come to trust and depend on the care we have offered them for the past four decades,” said Joseph McDonald, chief executive officer.

The Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century recommendation is in stark contrast with the stated objectives of the panel, McDonald said. The hospital is profitable, serves an elderly population (68% Medicare) and offers a one-year-old, $10 million, state-of-the-art emergency department in the midst of a national crisis in emergency care, he said. Through three quarters of 2006, St. Joseph Hospital showed a surplus of nearly $2 million and charity/community service care of $!.2 million in 2005.

“St. Joseph Hospital is busy and getting busier. In 2004, we took care of 22,477 in our Emergency Department. In 2005 it climbed to 25,014, up more than 11 percent. This year the new Emergency Department has already been 22,070 through 10 months, up another 6 percent,” McDonald said. “These people are choosing St. Joseph Hospital. Where will they go?"

McDonald said the proposed closing will put an arrow through the heart of the Catholic Health System and undermine its collective mission.

“Closing St. Joseph Hospital makes no sense for this community. It is an integral part of our mission,” McDonald said. “It is also essential to the physical, economic and spiritual health of the eastern suburbs and Buffalo’s far East Side.”

"The recommendation to close St. Joseph Hospital has the potential to

severely impact the delivery of critical health care services to the residents who live in and around Cheektowaga” said The Most Reverend Edward U. Kmiec, Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo.

“It appears the commission failed to take into consideration the fact that Catholic Health System has already been proactive, closing Our Lady of Victory Hospital in Lackawanna and St. Jerome Hospital in Batavia. We have made the difficult choices, at no cost to taxpayers. We will continue our effort to maintain St. Joseph Hospital, part of a unique health care ministry that is available no where else in Western New York," Bishop Kmiec said.

Commission officials say they can not continue to subsidize hospitals propped up by Medicaid, which now costs $46.8 billion and eats up a staggering 41 percent of the state budget, yet St Joseph Hospital serves less than 200 Medicaid patients annually. Shuttering the facility will only challenge the substantial elderly population it serves, McDonald said.

In the past two weeks, thousands of people have contacted the www.believecatholic.com  website to share their concerns. “From senior citizens saying they cannot afford a 20-minute cab ride to the hospital to families afraid their doctors will move from the community with the closure of the hospital, to businesses who recognize time is often the most important factor in the care of industrial accidents, people can not understand why Albany would interfere with something that works so well for so many,” McDonald said.

He noted that more than half of SJH’s 800 employees will not easily be absorbed into the local economy. “The greater cost to our employees and to our community as a whole, have not been carefully considered,” McDonald said. “Western New York should not be the poster-child for an under-funded mandate from Albany.”

Catholic health care has already been responsible for more than 90 percent of the hospital bed closures in this region due to actual facility closings. In recent years the system closed Our Lady of Victory and St Jerome hospitals, as well as four nursing homes.

“Others stood by and watched us close hospitals and did nothing. We did it with no financial help from the government. We did not see anyone else in this region follow our lead,” McDonald said.