Fix St. Joseph
The downtown hospital needs to remain open and be put on a path of improvement.
St. Joseph is the only designated level 3 trauma center in downtown Houston and is a crucial part of the emergency plans for any disaster hitting the Texas Medical Center.
St. Joseph Medical Center was back on the critical list this week with the announcement out of Washington that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will terminate its agreement with the hospital as of Dec. 3. The problemplagued hospital, Houston’s oldest, has been in danger for several years, most recently because it’s been out of compliance with agency regulations for much of the past six months. The Aug. 27 shooting of a combative, unarmed patient in a hospital ward only exacerbated the hospital’s difficulties. That incident put patients in “immediate jeopardy,” CMS ruled.
And now the hospital itself is in jeopardy of shutting down. If that happens, Houston’s homeless, the elderly and the poor will have no place to go. Losing St. Joseph also would greatly diminish access to psychiatric care, since it’s one of the few private institutions to have a waiver allowing it to provide inpatient mental health services under Medicaid. In addition, St. Joseph is the only designated level 3 trauma center in downtown Houston and is a crucial part of the emergency plans for any disaster hitting the Texas Medical Center.
St. Joseph’s proud history also would come to an ignominious end. It was Houston’s first teaching hospital, first destination for maternity and emergency care, the first “white” hospital to employ black doctors and the first provider of cutting-edge technology later identified with the Texas Medical Center.
In light of the vital services it continues to provide, in light of its venerable history, the city must not allow St. Joseph to shutter its doors. It’s as simple as that.
U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and state Rep. Garnet Coleman, both Houston Democrats, said earlier this week that they are assisting in the effort to negotiate a solution to save St. Joseph. In an e-mail to employees, St. Joseph CEO Mark Bernard wrote that the hospital’s leadership is “working with CMS and the Texas Department of State Health Services to find a solution that allows the hospital to continue serving its Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. Those beneficiaries make up 63 percent of St. Joseph’s patients. Coleman emphasized that few other hospitals serve the population St. Joseph does. “If there’s a homeless person downtown, that’s where they end up,” he told the Chronicle. “We forget as a society that everybody doesn’t get to go to Houston Methodist.”
As Chronicle reporters Todd Ackerman and Markian Hawryluk noted, a few lastgasp options remain (“St. Joseph booted from Medicare,” Page A1, Tuesday). St. Joseph leaders could negotiate an agreement that stipulates how the hospital will come into compliance, generally under the supervision of an independent consultant, or it could seek an injunction in court. Another option would be to sell the hospital to another health care system.
One option to stave off closure comes from Darrell Pile, CEO of the SouthEast Texas Regional Advisory Council, which helps to coordinate emergency and trauma care in the region. Pile has asked other hospital CEOs to form an advisory committee to help St. Joseph maintain its certification. “We need that hospital to stay open,” he said.
We do, indeed. It’s time for the city, the Houston medical establishment and elected officials to pitch in on St. Joseph’s behalf. The hospital where so many Houstonians were born in decades past needs their help.