Southeast Carries On Despite Shortages

The past five years have been arguably the toughest and most uncertain in the hospital's history.

In 2002, the company that had bought Greater Southeast out of bankruptcy several years earlier itself declared bankruptcy. In 2003, the hospital lost its national accreditation for several months over serious care issues, including blood transfusion errors and poor screening of workers and physicians. Some District regulators, alarmed by six patient deaths they deemed preventable, recommended that the facility be forced to close.

In 2005, the first of repeated rounds of layoffs began. By January, the medical staff was warning city officials of a potentially dangerous environment because of Envision's administration. Based on regulators' subsequent inspections, the doctors weren't far off.

With every new calamity, Chris Groover and her fellow nurses have told themselves, "We can't go any lower. It can't get any worse."

They were wrong.

"I haven't seen anything positive happen," said Groover, who has been swaddling newborns at Greater Southeast for two decades. She has watched its census of tiny patients dwindle to single digits -- once upon a time, 35 cribs were regularly filled -- and the unit threatened with closure. Down the hall, virtually the only remains of the defunct pediatric ward are characters from "Winnie the Pooh" and "The Jungle Book" that decorate one wall.

"We've learned to deal and still give the best care," Groover said Friday. She was catching up on paperwork, having sent home the nursery's sole occupant a few hours earlier. The quiet made it easier to reminisce about a time when she and other nurses didn't have to beg for the tools to do their jobs, much less bring in their own WD-40 to oil the hinges of recalcitrant doors.

Back then, "I was so proud to say I worked at Greater Southeast." She wants to feel that way again. "This is home. I still love this place."

But the past and present, as described by Nelson, the head of obstetrics and gynecology, are painfully different. How to attract doctors? And how to regain the public's confidence? Ward 8 is coming back, with more new home construction than anywhere in the city and development it has not seen for years. Greater Southeast, the city's sole hospital east of the Anacostia River, seems an isolated holdout.

"There is a need for a massive influx of money," Nelson said.

Superficially, the building does not show as poorly as its battered image. Its lobby is plain but neat. Its aged floors have a respectable shine. Keeping up even minimal appearances is a daunting task, however. Cleaning and maintenance crews face as many issues as almost every other department.

"We have a ton of equipment that never gets fixed," Calvin Lucas said. Back in 2000, the housekeeping worker had more than a half-dozen buffer machines at his disposal. Last month, the number was two. Not that many people were left to handle them. Their ranks also have been slashed.

"We're at a bare minimum," he said. It is a touchy point; in their latest report, regulators blamed inadequate staffing for their finding that the hospital was not being maintained "in a safe or sanitary manner." Lucas disagrees, but not vehemently. "It's a daily challenge," he conceded.

The man responsible for holding Greater Southeast together is an unassuming, soft-spoken physician, a hematologist by specialty, who arrived from North Carolina six years ago to take care of family business in the area. Cyril Allen was going to stay six months, but after he worked part of that time at the ambulatory care clinic that Greater Southeast was running at the former D.C. General, one thing led to another. Last fall, he was named chief executive -- the third since 2004.

Allen doesn't make excuses for the facility's problems or ownership. Still, he suggests that some of the censure is unfair. "It hurts when you hear it," he said. Good care is being delivered: "Patients here actually do get better."

An unlikely supporter as Quincey Gamble of the 1199 Service Employees International Union, which represents 275 Greater Southeast employees, is glad Allen is in place. Without him, Gamble said, the hospital's troubles would be much worse: "It's probably one of the most difficult working situations I've seen in some time."

Yet few expect it to be resolved until Envision leaves town. The company has been negotiating a contract with a Prince George's County businessman, though the numerous missed deadlines have city officials frustrated to the point of disbelief.

Greater Southeast employees hold on to hope.

"We really want the hospital to improve and survive and get back to the way it used to be," said fifth-floor nurse Tracy Willett, who has spent her entire career here. "We didn't put all these years into it for nothing."