Saturday, January 30, 2010
The emergency room is the only area of the hospital that is still open.
PITTSBURGH (AP) — A judge rebuffed efforts by a county councilman and residents to stop a hospital from closing in one of the city’s poorest suburbs, saying it’s his job to determine if doing so is legal not whether it is “unwise or cruel.”
Allegheny County Judge Gene Strassburger ruled Friday that the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center has the right to close UPMC Braddock as scheduled Sunday, under a 2007 bond agreement with Bank of New York Mellon approved by a county authority.
UPMC announced plans in October to close the hospital about five miles east of Pittsburgh, saying it lost $27 million in the last six years and was projected to lose $50 million more in the next six.
The 123-bed hospital is all but closed already. It stopped accepting patients two weeks ago; most of its 650 employees have moved to other locations; and only its emergency room remains open.
At-large county Councilman Charles McCullough argued UPMC must keep its properties open and operating under the bond issue. McCullough claimed his elective office gave him legal standing to fight the closing, since the county was a party to the financing.
Strassburger found that McCullough didn’t have standing, but that Jesse Brown, Braddock’s council president did — yet the judge still rejected the injunction request, saying the bond contracts simply don’t prevent UPMC from closing the hospital.
Activists and residents have argued the closing is also unfair and discriminatory because about two-thirds of Braddock’s 1,900 residents are black.
Strassburger said that’s up to the Justice Department, the Department of Health and Human Services or federal courts to determine.
The judge said he could “not fail to recognize that the closing of Braddock Hospital is a serious, if not crushing, blow to the mostly poor residents of Braddock.”
“Nonetheless, it is not my function to determine if UPMC’s action was unwise or cruel. Rather it is to determine if it is illegal or in violation of a contract,” Strassburger said. “It is not.”
The judge said even if the bond agreement required UPMC to keep the hospital open it would be up to Bank of New York-Mellon, or the bondholders, to make that case.
McCullough promised to appeal Strassburger’s ruling to Commonwealth Court, perhaps by day’s end, and said, “This does not necessarily mean the end of Braddock hospital.”
McCullough said he represents some residents who opposed a cell phone tower in another suburb more than 10 years ago.
The tower was built over their objections, but he said it could soon be taken down — and said it’s possible an appeal or protracted litigation could, likewise, force the hospital to reopen years from now.
But UPMC officials said the ruling was clear and that the hospital network, the largest in western Pennsylvania, is helping Braddock residents get medical care.
“Clearly, by dismissing the case the court agreed it was without merit both factually and legally,” spokesman Paul Wood said.
A dental clinic in the hospital is being relocated in the borough, as is a health referral and education program.
UPMC also runs a shuttle several times each weekday from Braddock to neighboring Forest Hills, where several doctors are located.
“UPMC has been committed to working with the community to expanding access to primary care physicians” and its existing network of outpatient clinics, Wood said.