More than 250 people joined the first public hearing this week to weigh in on the proposed merger of Rhode Island’s two largest healthcare systems, Lifespan and Care New England.
“I’m terrified about the impacts of this merger,’’ said Sara Gello Weinreich, a nurse at Butler Hospital in Providence. She recalled that Butler Hospital used to have 40 beds for children and adolescents. Care New England eliminated the pediatric beds, she said, because they were considered “redundant” with Lifespan’s Bradley Hospital, where she used to work.
“Our community has more mental health needs than ever,’’ Weinreich said. “We need guarantees that there will be absolutely no elimination of services.”
But Dr. Jody A. Underwood, Lifespan’s chief of psychiatry, said she supports the merger. A combined hospital system, she said, will improve access to psychiatric services through better coordination.
“The experts will be under one system collaborating with each other,’’ Underwood said. “A newly coordinated health system can better partner with the state to meet the needs of patients with severe and persistent mental illness and developmental disabilities.”
Lifespan and Care New England officials, who spoke during the first hour of the nearly two-hour Zoom meeting, said the merger also will help improve access to underserved populations. Both health systems have pledged to invest in reducing health disparities. But Kelly Price, a member of the Service Employees International Union Local District 1199 New England, questioned that commitment. Price is a nurse at Women and Infants Hospital. She’s also a woman of color.
“Will the people that are making decisions about my health care…understand my needs?” Price said. “You’re not representing my interests if you don’t have women or people of color in key positions making those decisions.”
Dr. Raymond Powrie, chief clinical officer at Care New England, said women in Rhode Island currently toggle between the two hospital systems depending on whether they are giving birth or receiving cancer treatment. “I can see no more important move for equity for women in the state,’’ he said, “than to bring these two complementary systems together.”
Dr. Louis Daniel Muñoz, a member of the state’s Equity Council and a candidate for governor, challenged the hospital leaders’ commitments to improving equity. “I hear a lot of talk to equity,” Muñoz said. “But frankly, we should have been working on health equity, we should have been expanding community health infrastructure. This merger is not going to do that.”
Brown University President Christina Paxson, said the merger offers “some real benefits” to the state and its residents. If the merger is approved, Brown plans to partner with the two health systems to create the state’s first academic medical center.
“We’re going to be able to attract even better physicians to come to this state,’’ Paxson said. “About 60% of the physicians in the state now currently affiliated with Brown support collaborative research that’s going to create the cures and the treatments and the prevention methods for diseases.”
Dr. Timothy J. Babineau, the CEO of Lifespan, said, “My ethics as a doctor would not allow me to advocate for this merger if I thought in any way it would do harm…This merger is in the very best interests of the patients and the community that Care New England and Lifespan had served over the years.”
Hospital officials also downplayed potential job losses.
“With over 3,000 jobs available right now in both our systems we think the impact on labor now is pretty minimal,’’ said James E. Finale, president and CEO of Care New England’s president. “We don’t think there’s any impact on the front-line caregivers.”
The next public hearing on the Lifespan-Care New England merger is scheduled for January 26. Members of the public can sign up online to testify at the Rhode Island Department of Health’s website.
Health reporter Lynn Arditi can be reached at larditi@thepublicsradio.org. Follow her on Twitter @LynnArditi
