Access, Funding Lead Health Issues
While advocates continue to press for an acute care hospital here, primary health care is the community’s greatest unmet need, panelists said Wednesday.
Citing pervasive stress due to job loss and fiscal uncertainty, Dr. Sharol Lewis said women especially need to stay healthy.
“The number one killer of women is heart disease,” said Lewis, who as medical director at Horizon Blue Cross deals with 12 hospitals.
Lewis was among speakers at Healthcare 2009 Roundtable, sponsored by the Union County Women’s Political Caucus. Plainfield Mayor Sharon Robinson-Briggs, Union County Freeholder Bette Jean Kowalski, Trinitas Regional Medical Center Senior Vice President Bernadette Countryman and Deborah Dowe of the Save Muhlenberg movement also took part.
Robinson-Briggs traced the closing of Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center last year and ongoing efforts to re-establish an acute care facility in the city. Officials have also been in negotiations with Muhlenberg’s parent group, Solaris Health Systems, to get an extra ambulance and better transportation in the wake of the closing. While an emergency room continues to operate on the Muhlenberg campus, patients needing acute care must travel to Edison, Summit or Elizabeth for treatment.
Lewis told the audience of about 40 people, including many Muhlenberg activists, “”I have a personal interest in Plainfield and I feel your pain.”
But when it comes to Muhlenberg, she said, “The effort really needs to go toward building an ambulatory infrastructure.”
She said doctors tell her that people are not coming in for routine, preventive health care and when they land in the hospital, patients become caught in a mismatch of goals: Insurance companies want to limit stays, but doctors may want to keep patients in the hospital longer. But Lewis said longer stays increase the possibilities of getting hospital infections and suffering complications from extended testing.
“I am very familiar with health disparities,” she said. “I am very familiar with how ambulatory service should work in an underserved community.”
Muhlenberg advocates in the audience deplored the increased distance and lack of coordinated transportation to remaining hospitals.
Now that an average 1,100 births can no longer take place at Muhlenberg, Countryman said, Trinitas and the Plainfield Health Center collaborate to provide taxis to Elizabeth and other arrangements for women in childbirth. Plainfield Health Center Vice President Eugene Baucum disputed panelists’ comments that the center was troubled.
“It’s not closing,” he said, noting the federally-funded primary health care facility also has operations in Elizabeth, Phillipsburg and Newton. He agreed with Lewis that there must be a greater focus on primary health care, but said of the center, “Nobody knows about it.”
Panelists also discussed ways to fund health care, noting that the burden of charity care was a factor in Muhlenberg’s overwhelming debt and in the loss of other hospitals. Robinson-Briggs said she is serving on a statewide alliance of mayors to address health care issues and speakers said they are also looking to the Obama administration to come up with strategies and solutions to health care funding and delivery.
--Bernice Paglia
Citing pervasive stress due to job loss and fiscal uncertainty, Dr. Sharol Lewis said women especially need to stay healthy.
“The number one killer of women is heart disease,” said Lewis, who as medical director at Horizon Blue Cross deals with 12 hospitals.
Lewis was among speakers at Healthcare 2009 Roundtable, sponsored by the Union County Women’s Political Caucus. Plainfield Mayor Sharon Robinson-Briggs, Union County Freeholder Bette Jean Kowalski, Trinitas Regional Medical Center Senior Vice President Bernadette Countryman and Deborah Dowe of the Save Muhlenberg movement also took part.
Robinson-Briggs traced the closing of Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center last year and ongoing efforts to re-establish an acute care facility in the city. Officials have also been in negotiations with Muhlenberg’s parent group, Solaris Health Systems, to get an extra ambulance and better transportation in the wake of the closing. While an emergency room continues to operate on the Muhlenberg campus, patients needing acute care must travel to Edison, Summit or Elizabeth for treatment.
Lewis told the audience of about 40 people, including many Muhlenberg activists, “”I have a personal interest in Plainfield and I feel your pain.”
But when it comes to Muhlenberg, she said, “The effort really needs to go toward building an ambulatory infrastructure.”
She said doctors tell her that people are not coming in for routine, preventive health care and when they land in the hospital, patients become caught in a mismatch of goals: Insurance companies want to limit stays, but doctors may want to keep patients in the hospital longer. But Lewis said longer stays increase the possibilities of getting hospital infections and suffering complications from extended testing.
“I am very familiar with health disparities,” she said. “I am very familiar with how ambulatory service should work in an underserved community.”
Muhlenberg advocates in the audience deplored the increased distance and lack of coordinated transportation to remaining hospitals.
Now that an average 1,100 births can no longer take place at Muhlenberg, Countryman said, Trinitas and the Plainfield Health Center collaborate to provide taxis to Elizabeth and other arrangements for women in childbirth. Plainfield Health Center Vice President Eugene Baucum disputed panelists’ comments that the center was troubled.
“It’s not closing,” he said, noting the federally-funded primary health care facility also has operations in Elizabeth, Phillipsburg and Newton. He agreed with Lewis that there must be a greater focus on primary health care, but said of the center, “Nobody knows about it.”
Panelists also discussed ways to fund health care, noting that the burden of charity care was a factor in Muhlenberg’s overwhelming debt and in the loss of other hospitals. Robinson-Briggs said she is serving on a statewide alliance of mayors to address health care issues and speakers said they are also looking to the Obama administration to come up with strategies and solutions to health care funding and delivery.
--Bernice Paglia
posted by Bernice at 7:29 AM
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