Hammond Mayor to Protest Hospital Downsizing Plan
(photo courtesy of Franciscan Alliance)
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowHammond Mayor Tom McDermott plans to lead a protest Friday afternoon in opposition of Franciscan Alliance’s decision to downsize its hospital in the Lake County city. McDermott tells our partners at The Times of Northwest Indiana he and others believe the move will create a healthcare desert in Hammond.
The Mishawaka-based health system earlier this month detailed plans to invest $45 million to convert the 100-year-old facility, which currently includes 226 beds, into an eight-bed acute care hospital emergency department and primary care location. Franciscan plans to demolish the oldest parts of the campus and reduce it to about 85,000 square feet, according to the publication.
“Hammond is the largest city in Northwest Indiana. It has areas of poverty and urban health care needs, yet the Franciscan Alliance wants to save money by demolishing 90% of the hospital,” McDermott told The Times. “Urban cores around the country have seen disinvestment in health care and now Franciscan Alliance is trying to make Hammond part of the list of cities with a health care desert at the expense of those people that need health care in their community most.”
Cal Bellamy, chairman of the Franciscan Alliance Northern Indiana Board of Directors, tells the publication while the decision to downsize the hospital was difficult, most of the facility is currently unused and people will continue to receive care.
“I don’t know anyone else lined up to invest $46 million downtown,” Bellamy said. “We’re keeping the McAuley Clinic open. I don’t know of anyone providing that amount of free health care to the uninsured. We also take anyone who will come in. I see Hammond fire department ambulances taking patients to Munster. People in Hammond know where to go to get health care.”
When the downsizing plan was announced, Franciscan cited its recently-expanded hospital in Munster, which is located some six miles from the Hammond facility. The health system said patients who require surgery or higher levels of care would be transported to an “appropriate hospital.”
McDermott called Franciscan’s decision a “public health emergency in Hammond.” He tells The Times the move will create more risk for “the urban poor and chronically ill who will now be forced to leave their city for health care miles away, where Franciscan has invested their dollars in wealthier suburban communities.”
Franciscan spokesperson Robert Blaszkiewicz responded by saying the Hammond hospital had only been operating at about of a fourth of capacity.
“Our inpatient census has dropped from 400-plus to just 50 to 60 daily. The number of babies delivered in Hammond has shrunk from thousands per year to less than one per day. The vast majority of care rendered in Hammond today is on an outpatient basis,” Blaskiewicz said. “Franciscan’s plan addresses the needs of patients seeking care in Hammond and provides for transfers of seriously ill patients to Franciscan’s other facilities or appropriate teaching hospitals. Patients and the businesses that provide them with health insurance fund every hospital’s expenses. We at Franciscan do not feel that renovating 800,000 square feet of mostly unused clinical space in 40- to 100-year-old buildings is good stewardship of community resources.”
McDermott will join other community leaders for the protest outside the hospital at 4 p.m. Friday.