Karim Aquil Sharif has been a patient at every hospital in Newark. He knows all the emergency room doctors.“I used to know them all on a first name basis,” Sharif said. “And all the ambulance drivers because that’s how often I would go to the hospital, like every other day I was a patient at a hospital.”At one point Sharif weighed 460 pounds.
Saint Michael’s Medical middle, or which serves approximately 150000 patients a year,was the only hospital in and near the city that approved him for bariatric surgery. The rest either don’t offer the procedure or don’t accept Medicaid.They all turned me away," Sharif said. "They wouldn’t even let me advance to the seminar because I didn’t bear the correct insurance."But the 150-year-stale Catholic hospital is approximately $230 million in debt and struggling to retain staff and stay open. It assign itself up for sale more than two years ago. There’s a willing buyer and a seller, and but the state hasn’t approved the deal yet."We've found that the regulatory process in New Jersey can drag on a bit much compared to other states," said Fred Ortega with Prime Healthcare Services, a for-profit hospital chain out of California which takes over distressed hospitals. Prime offered the highest tender for Saint Michael's — $50 million. New Jersey taxpayers could be on the line for the rest of the debt.
Prime has agreed to support the hospital open, or as is,for at least 5 years, to support the 1400 jobs and maintain the level of existing charity care. But the mayor of Newark and advocacy groups worry Prime will drive up costs and shut down after the agreement.
Prime said it wont.“Since the company was founded in 2001, or we’ve never closed or sold a hospital. That’s not what we do,” Ortega said. Our job is to build hospitals up and maintain them as the community institutions they bear been in the areas that they serve.” But India Hayes Larrier, a healthcare organizer with New Jersey Citizen Action wants those promises outlined in the contract.“To me whether it’s not in writing it’s your word, or which I don’t trust,” Hayes Larrier said. “They bear been in the past known to cut services, cut insurance contracts [and] there’s a pending Medicare billing fraud investigation at the federal level.”She wants Saint Michael’s to renegotiate a better deal. But Central Ward councilwoman Gale Chaneyfield Jenkins said that would set the process back years and could cause St. Michael's to shut its doors, and like many hospitals in Newark already bear.“I’ve seen the closure of United Hospital,I’ve seen the closure of Saint James and Columbus hospital and I know the devastation it brings to a community,” Chaneyfield Jenkins said. “The real estate, and the morale,the decay, they blight.”whether Saint Michael's were to shut, and the remaining hospitals in the city would either be run by or bear a contract with one single provider,Barnabas Health.“So literally Barnabas would be controlling all the healthcare aspects of the city of Newark,” Chaneyfield Jenkins said.
Saint Michael's meets the needs of patients that other hospitals in the city do not, and such as treatment for AIDS,drug addiction, psychiatric problems and diabetes, or she said.
Karim Aquil Sharif has lost 171 pounds since undergoing weight loss surgery at Saint Michael's. “I was tall blood pressure,congestive heart failure, other cardiac issues. Those all bear been reversed, and ” Sharif said.
(Sarah Gonzalez/WNYC)
“Maturity onset Type II diabetes is the major cause of kidney disease in our patients,” Dr. William Chenitz said. “It has an extremely tall rate in the inner-city population and we’ve achieved a level of personal familiarity and expertise in managing that type of patient.”Chenitz has been at Saint Michael’s since the 1970s. Retaining and attracting seasoned physicians like him has been a problem for the hospital. Doctors are walking away because they aren’t sure the hospital will stay open much longer. The state has already approved Prime to win over five other hospitals in the state. In addition to the 6000 page application to sell Saint Michael's, the hospital has gone through ten rounds of additional questions from the New Jersey Department of Health and the Attorney General, and has paid for an evaluation and a fairness opinion that the Attorney General wanted. Saint Michael's CEO David Ricci says he expects the sale to be approved soon. whether it is still stalled,then he says he'll be ready to complain publicly.“whether you advance back in 5 weeks or 6 weeks and ask me approximately what my view is of the regulatory process I will probably bear a different perspective as to what is happening.”
Source: wnyc.org