Clinic Has Already Breached Master Agreement: Mr. Anderson What Will Council Do?

[Brian Essi]

Mr. Anderson,

So it has been since Saturday that you have not responded to the post below.

What action will you advise council to take?

David Anderson wrote:

The Family Health Center and fully accredited ER will be able to do all or more than the former hospital did except admit you overnight. (Again, though, two out of every three beds at Lakewood Hospital were empty every night leading up to 2015.). However, any FHC patient that needs a bed will have preferential patient status at Fairview which guarantees a bed.

Mr. Anderson,

The FHC/ER does not provide close to the same level of care as what we had (full service hospital/ER).

The "old" ER provided high level care with specialty physicians coming into the ER to help treat and diagnose patients.

All we have now is 1 ER physician per shift that has to deal with EVERYTHING. So patients that should be treated by, say an Orthopedic Surgeon, are not getting that. What you get is an ER physician setting/reducing said fracture and, if you need surgery to repair it, having to sit and wait hours to be transferred to another facility. (And pay that extra ambulance $) Now some fractures can wait and be splinted and patients sent on their way to be seen as an outpatient. But you better hope you don't think you will get in right away-the CCF Orthopedic Doctors usually can't get you for days, sometimes over a week, according to patients. Best bet is to try Orthopedic Associates for quicker care.

Another example is MRI. In the "old" ER, MRI was on call after hours and could be called in for STAT exams, especially when it came to strokes. Now MRI is only open M-F till 5:30 pm. So, if you need to get a STAT MRI after those hours (or before if the techs were made to leave early because they weren't busy), you have to be TRANSFERRED to another facility and that STAT exam ends up taking hours to get done as opposed to 1 hour in the "old" ER.

And FHC patients getting preferential treatment and a guaranteed bed at Fairview?!! How about patients being transferred to SOUTHPOINTE because there are no beds at Fairview-it has happened a few times.

How about waiting 8,9 hours for a bed TO OPEN UP at either Fairview OR Lutheran? Happens weekly....

how about patients with mental health issues waiting 24, 28 hours for a bed, usually winding up at MARYMOUNT? Happens weekly...

So I guess what I am trying to say is, THERE IS NO GUARANTEE you will be admitted to Fairview or Lutheran.

Not the quality care we were guaranteed, not even close...

[Lori Allen _]

Council will most likely do what they have done since Summers Assumed his Position on his mighty throne on the second floor of a City Hall in some town in Ohio called Lakewood. That is, Summers has probably already instructed council what to do. I'm sure he has already told them to jump and that they are most likely 50 feet in the air by now.

Honestly, has council ever said no to something the mayor wanted? I don't believe so. They appear to just be a formality, like most other dictatorships.

Besides, what is the harm in a breach of contract among friends?

[Brian Essi]

History in our city has a way of repeating itself--repeated breaches go unaddressed for years, i.e. no accountability.

On June 17, 2010, Kevin Butler as Council President: “Their [CCF’s] argument has been, in my opinion, very reasonable,” said Council President Kevin Butler who represents Ward 1. “In a dynamic health care industry they don’t want to be bogged down by an extra review process that involved the city and gives the city overview it didn’t have before. This whole time we’ve been trying to reach an agreement that satisfies the city’s goals and the clinic’s goals.”

So Butler as Council President in 2010 was working on an agreement that satisfied the Clinic's goals.

I suppose he is advising Mr. Anderson right now that "we don't want the Clinic to be bogged down" by having to honor their agreement with us.

Or maybe he is saying "We just don't have any rights against the Clinic under the Master Agreement"

Things never change without accountability.

And that's exactly how Mr. Butler likes it.

[tom monahan]

Brian:

Maybe the reason that David couldn't get back to you in a timely manner was that he was responding to my Oct. 13th post that brought up the Clinic Mobile Stroke Unit. Maybe he was on the phone with Clinic folks in order to book its appearance here at City Hall.

Before last night's Council meeting there was a dog and pony show and a magical appearance of that gleaming white truck and its crew. Also the doctor who heads up that unit was there. I believe I lit a fire under David with my comments about the lack of oversight. I do believe that nothing would have been done to bring that unit here to Lakewood had I not brought it up.The head of the Unit said that Mobile van will be deployed to Lakewood starting November. Just a coincidence?

I know what the pro-closers will say: it was just a coincidence that the Unit showed up last night. And I guess it was just a coincidence that Channel 8 was there to record its arrival. You know, like Tom Gable said that Lakewood Hospital would close in August of this year at the same time Avon' hospital was opening.

So thanks for the opportunity to hold council's feet to the fire and make sure we get all the paltry pieces of that Master Agreement that we are entitled to.

At the Council meeting I was able to respond to Mike Summers yapping at the last council meeting about "where's your plan for the hospital? Where are you going to get a healthcare system and the doctors,etc., etc."

I then said that I would make a deal with him. "Please tell and the people of Lakewood who are the developers you have lined up for the hospital site? Please tell us who the principals are behind this project and all of the details about who will finance this development, including sources of financing," I said.

"Also, let us see the preliminary drawings of your proposed developers. If you provide that information, we will talk to you about what are plans are for the hospital," I told Summers. " You had five years for your plan," I continued.

"Come on, you are the architect for the closing of the hospital and for the diviseness in this city today I want to remind you that it is not our responsibility to find healthcare systems for the hospital That is your job and you blew," I continued.

"Every day that discovery (of documents and depositions)in our lawsuit goes on, more tales of how you did this to our city are making you and your defenders look more foolish," I said to him.

" I know that you like to deflect from real facts and substance of this very serious matter, but the time is now for you join with your feckless council members to give honest and transparent answers to the public," I concluded.

One other person, Mrs. Coletta Graham, spoke to council about why the Lakewood Observer was banned at City Hall. Sam O'Leary interrupted her and told her that it was not banned and that people could find copies of the newspaper in the outer lobby of City Hall, just not at the information counter on the first floor where the newspaper was free to all for the past 12 years.

I checked on my way outside and sure as shooting, there were several copies of OLD editions of the Observer there for consumption.

I guess that was just another coincidence in a night of coincidences. It was too much for me, so I went home to watch the Indians game.

[james fitzgibbons]

I agree with you Tom it was a well staged move to show up with the mobile strike unit, more shenanigans from CCF.

VOTE AGAINST 64

[Bridget Conant]

The mobile stroke unit is a poor replacement for what we HAD - a certified Stroke Center and interventional capabilities, all at Lakewood Hospital:

http://my.clevelandclinic.org/ccf/media ... _sheet.pdf

So what did we replace our full service, local stroke care with? Mobile unit that may or may not be available when YOU need it?

And it still must TRANSPORT you to main campus or wherever they decide they can handle your case.

No matter how they spin it, we have lost our "world class care" and now have a bus instead of a dedicated facility with all of the access to the doctors, imaging, and other interventions right at hand.

[cameron karslake]

The answer to the original question is:

Fall in line, that's what!