D.C. hospital plan is wacky

OPINION:

The D.C. Council could vote soon on funding two public hospitals at once.

One hospital is named United Medical Center; the other is slated to be built from the ground up on a site colloquially known as St. Elizabeths. Both sites are east of the Anacostia River.

Here’s the dilemma: The government of the District of Columbia does not know how to own and efficiently and effectively manage a public hospital.

It has tried at least five times, and failed in each attempt.

Instead of conceding defeat, it’s trying a fifth time.

Why? Politicians are playing the race and socioeconomic cards.

City officials claim that the current public hospital, United Medical Center, is needed because residents who live closest to it are afflicted with chronic illnesses, such as diabetes and heart trouble, and are often victims of trauma, including gun shots, stabbings and beatings. Pregnant women often have received prenatal care there and have delivered their babies there. (One lawmaker, in his 30s, noted his own birth at UMC to show his support for keeping it open during a recent meeting.)

City officials offered those same reasons for building a new hospital, which would be D.C.’s sixth.

Congress established Gallinger Municipal Hospital in the 1920s as No. 1. It was rebuilt and renamed D.C. General Hospital, becoming No. 2. It eventually was turned into a family shelter.

In 1966, Cafritz Memorial Hospital became No. 3. It was built across the Anacostia on Southern Avenue. Cafritz was sold, and the name was changed to Greater Southeast Community Hospital, No. 4.

Greater Southeast turned into a renovated United Medical Center, No. 5. (I witnessed then-D.C. Council member David Catania bragging about the new women’s health equipment for UMC at a press conference.)

The city has subsidized every version of the hospitals to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars — in health care and in mismanagement improprieties.

All the while, the very reasons that the city claims the need to keep the hospital(s) open remain unchanged — excluding the women’s health care equipment and births.

What remains troublesome are the chronic illnesses that now plague another generation and the unrelenting bloodletting that seemingly demands another hospital to replace UMC. Indeed, five people, including a youngster, were shot Monday at Barry Farm Recreation Center, which is only about five blocks from the site of the proposed new hospital.

Race and socioeconomics drive the Ward 8 hospital dilemma for these reasons: Ward 8 is the poorest of the eight wards in the District, one of the blackest wards in the District, one of the sickest wards and one of the most violent.

A single hospital is not going to change all those factors. Two hospitals are not going to change them either.

A name change or relocation of the public hospital isn’t going to change all those factors either.

The major reasons D.C. General was closed as the city’s public hospital in 2001 were cost, mismanagement and the ornery and chronic illnesses of its patients. In fact, people were using D.C. General’s emergency department as their primary care facility.

All these years later and Obamacare and heavily increased Medicaid outlays haven’t a changed a thing.

Lack of “insurance” is not the problem. Access to health care isn’t the problem either.

The primary problem with the city’s health care system is ensuring, not insuring, that health care providers deliver healthier services.

And it’ll be a disservice if the delivery of healthier services are left in the hands of the D.C. government.

Consider the site of the proposed hospital. It’s St. Elizabeths Hospital, which was shuttered for warehousing mentally and emotionally ill people, including John Hinckley Jr., who tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan.

Wacky, for sure.

⦁ Deborah Simmons can be contacted at dsimmons@washingtontimes.com.