Page 6 - Work Force January 2016

Hospital
workers:
Don’t play
politics over
hospital
ownership
MASSENA — CSEA members employed at Massena Memorial Hospital have ramped up
their efforts to stop hospital administrators and some town leaders’ move to outsource the public hospital to a private, non-profit board.
CSEA activists stepped up their efforts recently as it became more clear that Massena Town Council members would soon seek a vote to outsource the hospital that the town owns.
“As CSEA members, we must remain vigilant in having a voice in the future of our community hospital,” said Rick Tremblay, a CSEA member employed at the
CSEA Central Region Director Joseph Maratea, left, talks with union members working at Massena Memorial Hospital recently to discuss campaign strategy. Also speaking at the meeting was Local President Kerrie French.
WEST SENECA — An emotionally charged public debate is still grabbing headlines in Erie County regarding treatment for children requiring mental health services.
The state Office of Mental Health plans to relocate children from a rural setting in West Seneca to Buffalo Psychiatric Center, while trying to reduce per-patient costs and increase community-based services for those patients.
The plan to close the Western
New York Children’s Psychiatric Center is not a new one. Since it was first revealed in 2001, opposition to closing the facility has been fierce. However, a large coalition including CSEA, health care advocates, parents,
lawmakers and local residents are running out of time. The one-year commitment to keep the center open will end in 2016.
CSEA members, parents of patients, former patients, local community activists and academics all countered the Office of Mental Health’s assertions at hearings in September.
The West Seneca facility reports the lowest re-hospitalization rate in the state, treating patient’s ages 4 to 18 years of age in a family-centered, trauma-sensitive environment. As of mid-March 2015, the facility had 46 inpatients and a wait list of 16 people. The center opened in 1970 and serves children from 19 Western New
York counties.
Whenever the move takes place,
patients will be displaced with limited access to their families while being housed in a clinical “prison-like” environment with severely mentally ill adults. Also, the Buffalo facility includes a large population of adults in treatment as sex offenders whose victims have been under age 17. State officials say the children receiving care at the Buffalo facility will not have contact with adults, but parents remain highly skeptical.
Many of the children now served by the Western New York Children’s Psychiatric Center have experienced severe trauma, and many parents have stated at public forums this
move will devastate their families and add barriers to treatment.
“The irony and foolishness of
this misguided policy cannot be overstated,” said Tom Weston, CSEA Western New York DDSO Local president. “The Buffalo Psychiatric Center stopped treating children in the 1960s when doctors developed
a better understanding of trauma recovery and that children have specific and separate needs for successful treatment. That is why the Children’s Psychiatric Center was created in the first place.”
— Ove Overmyer
6 The Work Force
January 2016
hospital. “We must make sure the medical needs of our community are always at the forefront of any major decision.”
CSEA has long argued that outsourcing the hospital’s ownership would put health care services at risk, remove public accountability and reduce pay and benefits, which would increase employee turnover, jeopardize workers’ ability to deliver quality patient care and throw the already-struggling local economy further out of balance.
The union recently ran ads in several local newspapers calling on town officials to put the issue to a public referendum vote, as town residents voted by referendum in
1942 to create the hospital. “Massena has a legal obligation to
allow town residents to decide the future of their public hospital, and even more importantly, a moral one,” said CSEA Central Region President Colleen Wheaton. “After all, they were the ones who voted to create it and they are the true owners of their hospital.”
Union members have been busy gathering signatures to petition the council for a referendum vote. Meanwhile, CSEA also joined state Assemblywoman Addie Russell
in calling for the town to convert the hospital to a public benefit corporation, which would allow the hospital to affiliate with other health
care facilities to produce efficiencies and savings, while continuing the workers as public employees. Public benefit corporations are in place
in several other hospitals in which CSEA members are employed, including Westchester Medical Center and Nassau University Medical Center.
As this edition of The Work Force went to press, CSEA members
were preparing to rally before the December town council meeting at which a vote on privatization was expected.
— Mark M. Kotzin
Failed mental health policy means families will suffer