Palo Alto Medical Foundation (PAMF) is seeking to build a hospital and medical office building facility in San Carlos. Sutter Health, PAMF’s parent corporation, has a troubling track record of only providing care that is profitable, no matter its contractual obligations.
Sutter is in the process of backing out of a 20-year lease to run the county hospital in Santa Rosa, after claiming financial losses, and it abandoned another 20-year lease to run the county hospital in Merced, also after citing unprofitability. In addition, Sutter has signaled that it may cut all acute services at St. Luke’s hospital in San Francisco as early as 2008. This would put an unbearable strain on the full-capacity Emergency Room at San Francisco General, according to the San Francisco Department of Public Health. Caring for the uninsured is apparently just too costly for a nonprofit corporation like Sutter that posted a 33 percent increase in "profits” in 2006.
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Will PAMF/Sutter bring this same pattern of practices to San Carlos? If so, which seems likely, we ought to fully expect that this new facility will only provide profitable services and that the whole facility could be closed in the future if it does not meet profitability standards. It is all fine and good to praise PAMF, like many of PAMF’s employees, former employees, and patients did at the recent San Carlos City Council hearing, but why aren’t we talking about what really counts, namely the business practices of the parent corporation, Sutter Health?
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Keep the discussion civilized. Absolutely NO personal attacks or insults directed toward writers, nor others who make comments.
Keep it clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
Don't threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Anyone violating these rules will be issued a warning. After the warning, comment privileges can be revoked.