Posted on 01/11/2006 9:08:46 AM PST by lpeterboyd
CNSNews.com) - The Chicago chapter of the Service Employees International Union is apparently using hardball tactics to convince two regional hospital chains to allow its workers to unionize.
The union is urging uninsured Chicagoans to seek free medical care at the 16 hospitals belonging to the Advocate and Resurrection health care networks in a campaign that could financially squeeze the chains and place patients at risk, according to a hospital association.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) launched its Care for All campaign in September, but the union began targeting Advocate Health Care in 2003. That is when the SEIU launched the Hospital Accountability Project, complaining that Advocate was "putting the financial bottom line ahead of the needs of its caregivers and of those its mission supposedly serves."
Members of the Hospital Accountability Project have criticized Advocate, not only for preventing its employees from forming a union, but for pressuring low-income patients to pay bills.
The new campaign, created in conjunction with numerous community organizations, is "an outgrowth of earlier work that the Hospital Accountability Project has done," according to SEIU spokeswoman Kristyne Peter. The Project includes advertisements that inform uninsured residents of charity care opportunities, but only directs them to hospitals in the Advocate and Resurrection chains.
The Metropolitan Chicago Healthcare Council (MCHC) lists 96 hospitals in the Chicago area that offer the same charity services that are available at the 16 facilities on Care for All's list. "To think that just a hospital or some small group of hospitals provides charity care is an incorrect assumption," MCHC President-elect Kevin Scanlan said. "All hospitals do."
Scanlan said that all 96 hospitals have adopted the same charity care guidelines and "anybody who needs emergent health care can go to any emergency department at any acute care hospital."
He said the Care for All campaign places hospitals at risk of overcrowding and creates "an environment where those who are intended to be helped will actually be hurt, and could certainly have a much broader impact on the public's health."
The winter season, with the influx of flu-related illness and ice-related injuries, tends to be busy for hospitals. "We know our emergency departments are going to get inundated with a variety of these kinds of things at this time of year, which already puts a strain on them," Scanlan said. "Then to have this other type of situation occurring puts an even greater strain."
Peter of the SEIU called Scanlan's warning "speculation." She also told Cybercast News Service that the union has "a lot of people on the ground and there haven't been any instances of clogging or overburdening an emergency room."
Scanlan said the Care for All campaign harms the people it seeks to help, because it encourages them to go to hospitals that may not be the most convenient to their neighborhood. He said the MCHC has heard reports of patients traveling as many as 40 miles to be seen at an Advocate hospital because of the billboard ads.
Peter told Cybercast News Service that Care for All's focus is on the 16 Advocate and Resurrection hospitals because the union lacks the resources to investigate other medical facilities. "These are the two leading hospital [chains] in the Chicago area," Peter said, referring to Advocate and Resurrection, "and we have the most ... research about their charity care policies."
She added that while the MCHC and the Illinois Hospitals Association have instituted guidelines on charity medical care, the actual decisions on such matters are "up to the discretion of the hospital."
Peter said she did not know when other Chicago hospitals would be added to the list. "You will see more hospitals become part of the Care for All program in the future," she told Cybercast News Service, "but it's a little bit too soon to speculate."
The Care for All website does not disclose the group's connection to the Service Employees International Union or the union's Hospital Accountability Project. The website states only that Care for All was "created by local community organizations throughout Chicago."
Apart from Care for All, the Hospital Accountability Project has issued a "Protocol of Agreement," which is a list of the union's demands for Advocate Health Care. The Protocol states that, "no patient, who is unable to pay a bill for health care, should be sued for failure to pay" and that "workers should have the right to form and join a union."
Peter said there no specific plans to launch similar programs in other cities, but she added that uninsured health care is "not just a local issue, and so I can definitely see that happening in the future."
When Cybercast News Service contacted the Advocate and Resurrection health care systems, spokesmen for both groups directed comments to Scanlan.
Really? The nation's "largest health care workers union" doesn't have the resources?
How DARE they ask people to pay for services rendered, what kind of a country IS this?!? /sarc
KEEP THE UNIONS OUT OF THE HOSPITALS!!!!!!!!
Do you have any links about that? I have seen news stories about the closing, but none have mentioned any real reason for the closing, let alone anything about union or employee troubles.
I love German food, and prefer Dortmunder dark beers, so hate to see any place serving them going down, especially landmark institutions. If it is labor trouble, that's even worse.
Thanks.
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