Doctors Paint a Dismal Portrait

Council Members Tour Facility as They Weigh Aid Request

Medical staff members speak with lawmakers about Greater Southeast's outdated equipment during the tour. (By Jahi Chikwendiu -- The Washington Post)

A third of the D.C. Council crossed the Anacostia River yesterday and toured the hospital where they and their colleagues are being asked to spend $79 million. What they saw and heard from doctors there is that Greater Southeast Community Hospital remains at risk of collapse.

Even as sale of the facility to a New England-based company moves forward -- contingent, the buyer has made clear, on the city's multimillion-dollar assistance -- administrators are struggling to maintain services and staffing.

Current owner Envision Hospital Corp. has repeatedly failed since late August to send the $500,000 weekly its chairman had pledged. Without that funding, vendors, including physician groups, are again not being paid. Chief executive Cyril Allen was unsure several days ago whether he would have the money to meet his payroll.

"It's past urgent," Allen told his audience yesterday.

The field trip was headed by the council's health committee chairman, David Catania (I-At Large), who is pushing the deal with Specialty Hospitals of America as Greater Southeast's last hope. The council is expected to consider the city's proposed investment in early October, and it is uncertain whether Catania and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) have the nine other votes needed for approval.

"There are a lot of details that need to be laid out for us," council member Harry Thomas Jr. (D-Ward 5) explained to nine of the facility's medical leaders who greeted the delegation.

Specialty would turn the hospital into a "medical mall" with up to 150 short-term acute beds and double that number for patients needing lengthy hospitalization or nursing care. The city would assist with $20 million toward the purchase price and daily operations and $59 million to retire the institution's debt and provide new equipment and infrastructure.

The combination of loans and grants "is a deal that makes sense," Fenty said in announcing the plan.

But it must happen soon, the doctors emphasized to their guests.

The suits sat on one side of the second-floor board room, white coats on the other. Julian Craig, a pulmonary and critical care physician, talked about the medical staff's steady decline.

"Just trying to get physicians to come to the ICU has been very difficult," Craig said, describing how he's had to "beg" to fill the schedule. "I don't know how much longer I can keep the people we have on board."

Most of Greater Southeast's technology is obsolete, he and others said. Yes, the hospital's radiology department has a CT machine, though it is far from state of the art. But "just about every other piece of equipment needs to be replaced," noted Charles Hunter, the radiology department's chairman.

Patients who need pacemakers are sent elsewhere. The vendor that had been supplying the devices now refuses to deliver because of nonpayment. With the operating room only scheduling elective surgeries three days a week because of financial constraints, the caseload has dropped 40 percent, surgeon Wilton Nedd said.

"Are we underserving this population?" Nedd asked. "Absolutely."

Council member Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4) took notes, as did a representative for council member Carol Schwartz (R-At Large). Early on, council member Kwame R. Brown (D-At Large) wondered whether the city has any choice but to help with the hospital's sale.

"The question becomes, if not this, then what?" Brown said. At his neighborhood supermarket in Southeast, people have been pressing him on what the future holds. They want to know: "After this investment of money, can we be assured that we have a top-quality hospital, or will it be a huge Band-Aid?"

He's still considering his answer.