Please see the recent blog post from Elliott Gorelick (AHD Board Member) addressing a recent and highly misguided letter in the Alameda Sun praising Alameda Hospital.
In case you’re uncertain as to whether to trust Mr. Gorelick’s opinion, please consider his CV:
- Doctor of Pharmacy, UCSF (in progress or awarded, I’m not sure what stage he’s at)
- Continued studies in Health Economics, UC Berkeley
- M.S., Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University
- B.A., Economics, Stanford University
His CV is impressive. Even if he didn’t have that CV, I’d agree with Mr. Gorelick: he’s the first, and often the only, voice of reason on the hospital board and publicly here in Alameda. But having that CV, well, maybe we should all wake up a little bit and pay attention to what he’s been saying and continues to say at Alameda Healthcare District board meetings and on his blog here.
Furthermore and in my opinion:
What we all need to understand is that today’s medical standards provide the following: diagnostics and treatment in specialized cardiac and stroke medical systems that begin in the field with the paramedics and continue uninterrupted on through to the readied (when you’re wheeled in, they are standing there ready to pounce) specialized cardiac or stroke team that includes leading-edge imaging diagnostics, expert physicians and surgeons and highly-trained event-specific (cardiac or stroke) support teams.
Key here is the term ‘uninterrupted’ which correlates to improved outcomes, e.g., stroke victims with no damage or residual symptoms. Any detour to Alameda Hospital, by definition, is an interruption that cannot help but correlate to worse outcomes.
The biggest risk to a healthy longevity while residing or visiting Alameda is due to the Emergency Medical System protocols (what the paramedics follow) that require these detours to Alameda Hospital. The fact that Alameda Hospital continues to provide low-capability but emergency and stroke cardiac care, that extracts patients out of the specialized cardiac and stroke care systems only to re-insert them back into it (i.e., sending them to the hospital a victim should have originally gone to), is a not only disservice to everyone but poses an enormous and unnecessary hazard for worse outcomes for those experiencing a heart attack or stroke.
We have a right to contemporary standards in our medical care.
Alameda Healthcare District Board Members Battani, McCormick, Chen, and Deutsch, Vice Mayor Bonta, and City Council Member Tam, have all been a part of the hospital business strategies that ensure substandard emergency medical care for Alamedans. Please remember this when you cast your vote in November.
Understandably ill-informed
The following letter appeared in the Alameda Journal:
“Don’t skimp on funds for Alameda Hospital
On Aug. 2 with no pain — just shortness of breath — I left work at 8 a.m. and drove myself to the Alameda Hospital emergency room. I thought it was my asthma. I was in increasing distress.
The emergency staff immediately took me in, did an EKG, chest X-rays, started IVs and determined I was having a heart attack. This was a shock. I have no history in my family and never experienced chest pains.
The emergency room staff, with extraordinary professionalism, summoned Alameda Fire Department paramedics, who transported me with red lights and siren to Summit Cardiac Center Cath Lab for an emergency angioplasty and stent — all this before noon. Having my own HMO with its facilities in Oakland, I was one who hesitated to support the bond measure that would fund Alameda Hospital. I didn’t think I would be able to use it.
In my shortsightedness, I failed to grasp the fact that each citizen on Alameda island could have a life-threatening event at any moment, and the Alameda Hospital emergency room and fire department paramedics are all we have between life and, yes, death itself.
I am again, so grateful to live on Alameda.”
The letter writer displays an amazing ignorance. I am certainly happy that this turned out well for him/her but driving themself to the ER, thinking that their time in the Alameda Hospital ER was anything but dangerous delay and concluding that they are safer because Alameda Hospital 1. delayed their treatment 2. charged them for that privilege 3. Did nothing really except summoned help is ignorant.
I understand that this person feels good about what happened, but they couldn’t be more wrong. And this is why it is almost impossible to rid ourselves of the costly, health-destroying institution. The ignorant fed by the politically ambitious (Rob Bonta, Mary Ezzy-Ashcraft, Lena Tam, Stewart Chen) and the dishonestly self-interested (Rob Deutsch and Debit Stebbins) have just so much more social capital. (Lauren Do, Jordan Battani, and John Knox White when given a choice of standing with their friends or for the truth will choose their friends because that’s the civil way to go and, they are, just like this letter writer too ignorant to see the truth.)
I am still waiting for a knowledgeable person to articulate an argument for the Hospital that doesn’t distill down to the “voters approved it many years ago and you don’t have any smoking gun* that it kills people.”
*Actually, there is a smoking gun and the State fined the Hospital $50,000 for the inappropriate use of fentanyl patches. The Hospital is appealing that fine (an appeal that I will be astonished if they win).
Denise Lai
Raising Hell For Good 