Last week, the District announced agreements to build two new hospitals to serve residents in areas of the city with less health care access (and, generally, worse health outcomes): one at the St. Elizabeths campus in Ward 8, and a new Howard University Hospital in Ward 1.
Despite the long, complicated fight for a new hospital east of the river, not everyone is happy about the new deals.
On Tuesday afternoon, the District of Columbia Nurses Association said in a statement that the deal for the Ward 8 hospital, which would replace the beleaguered United Medical Center, lacks transparency and “resoundingly fails to meet the health care needs of our residents.”
The DCNA represents nurses who work at UMC, the District’s only public hospital, and one that has been beset by accusations of mismanagement and medical mistakes. The hospital had to close its obstetrics ward in 2017 after errors from hospital staff endangered mothers and their newborns.
In its statement, the DCNA highlighted the significant drop in licensed beds at the new hospital, from UMC’s current number of 300 to 136 (though there will be an ability to expand to 196 beds).
Director of the DCNA Ed Smith tells DCist that, while DCNA is in favor of a hospital that meets the needs of residents and workers east of the river, this agreement does not do that. “[You] can’t serve 165,00 residents with a 136 bed hospital,” he says.
Smith also said that an agreement that only includes a Level III trauma center (instead of the highest Level I) isn’t good enough. “Wards 7 and 8 need a top, state-of-the-art trauma center, first and foremost,” says Smith. Violent crimes with a gun in Ward 8 went up about 10 percent over the last year. City officials told the Washington Post that the hospital would be equipped to stabilize gunshot patients before transferring them to another hospital for care.
Furthermore, the association criticized the perceived lack of guarantee of jobs for current UMC nurses. “The same District Government that now praises us as ‘heroes,’” reads the statement, “apparently doesn’t believe we are proficient at our jobs at UMC to continue to have employment and care for patients at a new hospital.”
Smith says that many of the issues in Tuesday’s statement are the same ones nurses have talked about for a year and half in regard to building a new hospital that will serve wards 7 and 8. He says they hope that the mayor’s office and its private partners in this deal (George Washington University Hospital and Universal Health Services) will come back to the table and be more transparent about what exactly this deal includes while listening to community partners.
The mayor’s office and George Washington University Hospital did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the DCNA statement.
The D.C. Council still needs to approve this deal along with a hospital to replace Howard University Hospital. That’s expected to happen in June.
As of Tuesday, Ward 8 has seen the most coronavirus-related deaths with 59. Overall, of the District’s 264 victims, 80 percent are black. Only 46 percent of the District’s population is black.
