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tv   [untitled]    November 15, 2010 2:00pm-2:30pm PST

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francisco, and at present, i have a son with special needs. he was born with a genetic disease, and i am thankful for the health care that he has received so far, but yet, worried if i would think he would be one of those children or infants out there who would not have that kind of health care available to them. at present, we are even being warned or told that we might
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have some services cut, and we do not know what to do or how to go about it. actually, he has a problem with his breathing. he was sent home with oxygen, but then, we were not able to be issued a monitor to be able to see how his oxygen level is. we thought it was like being sent home with a bottle of pills, but with no instructions of how to take the medicine. maybe there is instruction are around a bottle telling us what time and how to take the pills. we do not necessarily know when we need the oxygen to be able to give it to them -- to him. it is true that an ounce of
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prevention is better than a pound of cure. we would hope that it could be addressed and that we would not be avoided, and that the city does take into consideration what the needs are of the people. thank you. supervisor campos: thank you very much. next speaker please. >> good afternoon. ron smith of the hospital council. first, i want to really thank the supervisors, particularly supervisor campos, maxwell, chiu, and mar and all the supervisors for allowing us to work over the last several months. as a 49-year resident, i want to say i was particularly moved, supervisor maxwell, by your question two weeks ago at this
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committee hearing, when you were probing hospitals to try to find the very best answer. i was so proud of our city with the interchange. i know you met with both those hospitals. i want to thank you so much. we also want to thank supervisor campos for realizing how important is to protect our hospitals and citizens. there is a seismic deadline coming up, and the hospitals have to be built and opened by then, or they will be close. we have two concerns -- one is the appeal process, by having an extra layer of appeal process, we think it will increase costs and time without adding quality. the other thing is there are hospitals that have historically served underserved and needy populations. as they rebuild, we think that they should have special consideration because they have
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served such a remarkable role in san francisco and continue to. with that, we want to thank you very much for all of your caring and listening to us. thank you. supervisor campos: thank you. let me read a few more names. [reading names] please come forward. >> good afternoon. i represent the good neighbor coalition and the housing corporation. i would like to remind you, supervisor maxwell -- you may remember this -- in 2002, at higher -- kaiser hired to promote the plan for a very drastic change in their services and also demolishing a bit of housing thanks to a strong message at the board and also the community members that were outraged as well. that plan never went anywhere, but had it gone anywhere, a lot
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of these same debates would have happened around kaiser instead of cpmc. the point being that in times like this, we actually need more planning, we need more community input, and we need to be intentional about our vital resources. housing is one of the few parts of the -- is one of the parts of the formula. there are health care, jobs, impact on the neighborhoods, and this goes quite a long way in addressing our health care needs. to quote the song from the 1970's, "you think this song is about you." it is not. >> thank you for the work you have been doing.
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looking at this more openly because i am a nurse, and we need to look at all the service from the top to the bottom, from the rich to the poor, and because we are losing homes. i just want to remind you that we need homes. we need both. let us work together and the both of them working together. maybe you might be here one day. supvervisor campos: thank you. >> i am with self-help for the elderly. self-help is a nonprofit social- service agency. we also fall under health care programs. i have not read all the changes. i am hoping that addresses them.
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i am a hospital administrator. when we talk about home care and hospice programs in the community, our residential care facilities, are all summer's day care, we overall support this legislation. we provide services to the most needy. this is the pipeline hospital. we think by making sure those go through the pipeline projects, people can continue to be served, so thank you. supervisor campos: thank you. next speaker. >> good afternoon once again, supervisors, i want to thank all of you for your attention to this issue. i want to think supervisor camp os for meeting with us from the
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hospital community. i want to comment for people in the audience -- supervising has moved forward. there is a house an ordinance in the city. hot off the press, we were, in order to do the expansion we want to do in the future -- we purchased a 22-unit housing complex which was old and decrepit. next month, we will be opening a brand new 22 unit housing complex in a block away from the original site. we spent $10 million replacing the building. just to clarify, there is a it replacing house meant ordnance in the city. none of us go into committees -- into communities and all those housing. if we do, we replace it. in order to address the
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ordinance today, i just want to reiterate what previous speaker ron smith said. we do support the consolidation of the appeals process, but in addition to that, one of the things we want to make sure happens is all of us in the medical community, including kaiser permanente, would like to have a seat at the table as we go to this planning process. we are very much in support of the health care master planning and we think the concept is a good one. we think we have a lot to offer in the wake of our experts involved with planning. we would like to be at the table in pursuing the planning. the other thing i would like to address is the historical role our facilities have served. we have been in the same location for 60 years. we have invested millions of dollars in our property the exemption would not meet the needs of most of the improvements we need to do at
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our facility. thank you. >> good afternoon supervisors i am more and brown. i appreciate your willingness to entertain amendments to make this into a better piece of legislation. we strongly support -- let me emphasize that -- health-care planning. the city can look forward to developing a health care master plan. we recognize how important it is the health-care planning at a local level recognize what is going on on the state and federal levels, particularly with federal health care reform. the supervisor earlier said we are under a legislative mandate from the state. we have to make sure that our hospitals are seismically compliant. we are under a time line with an uncertain deadline in order to achieve that. we really appreciate your willingness to entertain the
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amendment, to allow projects that are currently being considered to move forward expeditiously. i remind the supervisors that unfortunately we do not control the approval process. it is possible the project currently in the pipeline will not actually be approved in time to be exempt from this ordinance. i think it is very important that the supervisor understand that any health-care master plan that delays our ability to rebuild is dangerous for the city. it is dangerous for citizens of the city, dangerous for the feasibility of our projects. it puts on hold the investment of billions of dollars, 1500 construction jobs, and 6500 planned jobs in health care. i think you need to take that into account. finally, we would encourage you to consider the ramifications and consequences of passing a politicized health care master plan that would derail or delay our project and the necessary rebuilding of health-care
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facilities. we think that would be an extraordinarily unfortunate consequence of not exempting projects that are currently in the pipeline. thank you. supervisor campos: a few more names. nato green, linda schumacker, brian webster, linda chapman. >> my name is diane. i represent kindred health care. we are in the business of long- term care. we have 585 beds in san francisco. 350 of those patients are [unintelligible] one of my corporate concerns from our company is the delay. this would discourage companies that would want to come in and. it is hard enough to do business
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in san francisco. there is a lack of long-term care facilities. we are hesitating right now to purchase a couple that are on the market. i am very active this ordinance. we need a master plan. but have you considered the delay it would cost for some of the long-term care facilities? that is all. thank you. supervisor campos: thank you. >> it is planning. it is saying we will know what we need. that is all we are doing here is trying to make sure we are planning for what we need. and if we find -- i think as our population ages -- what is the alternative? [laughter]
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we are going to need those places. i think our planning will show us that. instead of it being time delayed, it might be an approval process that is faster because it is something we need. it is not that it is going to be the worst thing ever. i think you need to be careful how you frame your comments to us, because it -- just be careful how you frame it so it makes sense and it is not just if you don't we will fall off a cliff, because it just does not work that way. thank you. >> abbey yen, sts. francis hospital. i appreciate the opportunity to come into you one more time. i think god just locked us all in the room. we are all here, and we are all very interested in doing a plan. i think that is part of what this legislation has done, is made that clear we are very interested in a good health
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master plan for san francisco. i would ask on behalf of our facility that our rebuilds in the future as it relates to the legislation -- we have a 2013 deadline. we are retrofitting our facilities at st. mary's and st. francis as we speak. they will pass the 2014 deadline, but we will be looking at a 2013 deadline. -- at a 2030 deadline. it requires an outlook and we are not there yet. the suggested amendment presents us with interesting challenges for how we could look beyond those years into 2030 and preserve -- for all of us, we recognize the mecca san francisco is for health care, and the great regional programs we provide. st. francis has an original burn center that has recently been able to demonstrate its fell you to the wider community, not just san francisco. -- its value to the wider
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community, not just san francisco. something we would ask for and continue to support in the health care master plan is to consider truncating the appeals process into an already existing process and to consider how we can further clarify the historical role of the existing institutions within the city. thank you. supervisor campos: thank you. next speaker. >chairperson maxwell: i also wanted to think the hospitals. we cannot do this planning without them. we need their input. just like they came in with health the san francisco, -- healthy san francisco, we could not have gotten where we are. they are our partners in this and i want to thank them. >> i have been here 12 years and have been involved with the leadership of supervisor campos to develop policy tools. this is what i would like to
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emphasize. not just overstate this, because you have just eloquently stated, supervisor maxwell -- but these tools are built on legislation and has been attempted before and lost. we are trying to come back with a 21st century version of doing rational health planning. it does not take away all the politics, but it does end up offering you two tools -- the master plan, which we have consensus, which will take about 12 months. in terms of the timeline, i think this whole compromise situation is important. secondly, the consistency determination, which is more politicized. i would ask you to sort out the false objections and falls enemies on this, including the narrow focus of some folks that i read in "the business times"
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who say this is a tilt against the business community and for the public sector. this is for public transparency and for rational planning that is accountable. as you see now, the strategic plan at the department of public health, which i was a part of developing, is an internal document. this plan would be an external public document that you could use, rather than an internal document. i think the health commission understands that and the planning commission definitely understand it. that shows that. on the consistency determination, i really think it is an efficiency move. it is for planning that will take us out of the willy-nilly discussions, the super heroic events that led to the who blue ribbon commission, etc. supervisor campos: thank you very much. i want to thank the former
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commissioner for her invaluable feedback on this. thank you very much for her leadership. >> my name is alex mahana. we are both from san francisco. we would like to thank supervisor campos for providing us with the window for our institution to provide a place to provide health care as well as for others to work. there is a lot of concern. as to our livelihood and job, for 18 months, we fought for a contract to provide us all with jobs at the institution, which was of great concern to us because we're concerned about
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-- we were very concerned about job security with everything having to be up to code and everything else. >> i am william custer. i am a hospital worker. i want to thank you for amending -- our amendment. [laughter] anyway, i am 28 years old. i spoke to a city supervisor campos last week. i have two young children. we worked very hard on a contract, especially in these economic times. we just want to do our part on behalf of the contract to make sure our hospital is built on time so we can create a lot more jobs for us and make sure that we keep our pay, keep our
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seniority, keep everything. that is pretty much it. thank you. supervisor campos: i have a few more names. steve wu, emily lee, alex tom. >> good afternoon, supervisors. thank you for having this hearing again. nato green california nurses association for planning. we have not had a position one way or another in terms of extension four pipeline projects. we are willing to defer to the wishes of the planning commission. you should be aware that, not to be overly concerned about the -- on the issue of the seismic deadline, the hospital industry has consistently lobbied for extensions to those same seismic deadlines, most recently through sb 289, which was
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narrowly targeted. to the extent that cmpc was recently willing to play fast and loose with seismic exemptions. i would not be too rev. toward them. on the other issue, we would oppose defining in the master planning process what private sector entity should be part of the health care plan in process. of course, the provider should be involved, but should it be the hospital council? should it be the clinic? should it be unions representing the workers? should it be community advocates? everybody should be involved, and we do not want to start listing that in the legislation. finally, we have been through this legislation process. it is not specifically about c bmc. it is about health care with everyone. we are in disputes with kaiser and others about their proposed rebuilds and reductions in
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services to those communities that are part of those projects. we need good legislation to promote access to health care and give the city more tools to advocate for health for everybody. supervisor campos: thank you very much. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is eileen prendiville. california requires that each city and state adopt a general plan which requires statement mandates including open space, conservation, housing, etc. additional topics can be included. health care absolutely is included in part of this plan. as a registered nurse in san francisco for 33 years, i have seen many changes in health care, from the downsizing of registered nurses during managed care in the '90s and de-skilling of andersen's -- of nurses.
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we may still be endangering our patience today. but when we decrease services in low income often immigrant communities and cut non profitable services like psychiatry and skilled nursing and dialysis services but open probable outpatient surgery centers and clinics, the goal first and foremost for them is to increase their profits, not to serve the needs of the community. for example, peninsula announced recently it would sell its skilled nursing community and its wheel dialysis centers, but is looking to purchase a surgical center which includes profitable ambulatory centers and include several units in san francisco. we all know cornering the market share of the business drives up costs for everyone. hospitals are one of those businesses. we need to hold health care businesses accountable to the
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community, where they benefit from the nonprofit status. i urge you to pass this legislation and lead the way for the community to do the same. supervisor campos: thank you very much. the speaker, please. >> kevin, coalition for health planning san francisco. i am also a member of the bernal heights neighborhood association. thanks for your leadership in san francisco communities. it is effective public policy. how is planning bad? i do not understand that. having data in front of you and being able to make a consistency determination with that data, saying this project fits, only seems like a good public policy. ask yourself why the hospital industry is trying to kill this legislation. it is not profitable enough. it seems tough when we are putting profit ahead of good public policy. there is criticism this has been rushed. there have been seven months.
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multiple meetings have been had where amendments have been introduced by the hospital industry themselves. for them to come back to weeks ago and say it is too rushed seems like it is somewhat laughable. also, look at the idea of concern with seismic deadlines. major grain just pointed out these guys just applied for a extension that had to be vetoed by republican governor. if that does not speak to you, i do not know what will. once again, we think that plenty of time has been given to look at this legislation. i urge you to pass it and give the planning commission and health commission the tools they have been clamoring for. give the community the tools they have been clamoring for. help us make good and effective decisions. supervisor campos: william ho, yoland salazar. >> my name is linda schumacher
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and i am the chief operating officer for chinese hospital. i come to thank you for your leadership in helping to provide the direction and planning for the health care needs of san francisco. chinese hospital is a very unique community health care provider with a unique history. we have been in existence for 110 years. we are the only hospital dedicated to the care of chinese in the united states, and have been supported by the community extensively. in 1925, the community raised the funds to build the first official hospital at 835 jackson st.. we are -- we are governed by a voluntary board of trustees. 90% of our residents come from san francisco. more than 45% come from the communities in chinatown, north beach, and not hill.
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98% are asian. 88% are over the age of 60. we serve a unique nation of residence in san francisco. -- we serve a unique niche of restidents in san francisco. overtly -- over 90% of them speak chinese. originally, we were concerned that the language in the available public document would impact our ability in the pipeline to meet and go forward with our plans to build a new hospital. we thank you for that amendment. that allows the date to be changed. we look forward to working with you on the health care plan for san francisco. supervisor campos: thank you very much. next speaker, please. >> my name is wayne hu.