Report: Hospital closure would cut access
The planned closure of Berkeley’s Alta Bates Summit Medical Center would severely restrict health care access for poor, elderly and minority East Bay residents, increase wait times for emergency care, and result in a loss of jobs, according to a new report by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Urban and Regional Development.
Sutter Health, which owns Alta Bates, said in 2015 it would close the 347-bed hospital on Ashby Avenue by 2030, the year that California hospitals must comply with new seismic retrofitting standards or be decommissioned. Alta Bates is the only 24-hour emergency department in Berkeley, and has one of the highest volumes of emergency room patients in the East Bay.
Sutter has said it will move services to its nearest medical facility, Alta Bates in Oakland, three miles away. Executives have said it would not be cost-efficient to operate two hospitals so close to each other. Alta Bates in Berkeley is not seismically safe, and there is not enough room to operate the hospital and undergo new construction at the same time, a Sutter spokeswoman said Monday.
The health system’s plan to close the Berkeley medical center has prompted outcry from residents and Berkeley city officials, who have fought for months to pressure Sutter to reverse course.
The biggest effects would be more crowding at emergency departments in the region and longer travel times to emergency rooms; reduced access to prenatal, birthing and neonatal care; delayed care, increased hospitalizations and increased costs for people of color; and the loss of emergency capacity to treat earthquake and fire victims in the event of a disaster, according to the report commissioned by the city of Berkeley.
It takes Berkeley EMS about 12 minutes longer to get to Summit medical center in Oakland compared to Alta Bates in Berkeley, according to estimates from Berkeley Fire and Alameda County EMS. But Alta Bates in Oakland has already been the designated EMS ambulance receiving center for acute heart attack and stroke patients since 2011, Sutter reported.
The Summit medical center in Oakland would need to double its emergency department capacity in order to accommodate all of Alta Bates’ patients, the report found.
Without access to Alta Bates, West Contra Costa County residents would have to go to Kaiser-Richmond, which has limited capacity, or hospitals 18 to 25 miles east, such as Contra Costa Regional Medical Center and John Muir Hospital, the report said.
“It confirms our worst fears that if Alta Bates in Berkeley were to close, it would have a negative impact on emergency and health care not just for Berkeley but the whole I-80 corridor,” Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin said.
The study was limited in scope and does not take into account the current health care landscape, Sutter spokeswoman Amy Thoma Tan said. “Sutter is committed to the East Bay and to developing a regional solution that works for all,” Thoma Tan added.
Alta Bates serves about 50,000 patients each year, and more than 60 percent are on Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program for the poor, or are indigent or uninsured.
The report found the closure would lead to a “likely loss of livingwage jobs” for entrylevel hospital workers and some skilled positions, such as nurses, but it did not have a specific projected number of job losses. SEIUUHW, the union that represents many health care workers, estimates that in 2015 the hospital employed 280 people in low-skilled jobs such as clerks, patient aides, food service and custodial staff, nursing assistants and technical support staff.
Berkeley officials have floated the possibility of Sutter selling Alta Bates to another health care operator, though it is unclear if other providers would be interested in acquiring the hospital.
“The conversations with Sutter continue,” Arreguin said. “We’ve been meeting with them for the past two years; we’re eager to continue to work with them to find a solution.”