Lovelace’s hospital proposal fails to examine all the issues

As physician leaders of the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center and UNM Hospital, we write to voice our concern over recent public, and often erroneous, criticisms that are being launched at our UNM Health System.

These negatively charged attacks threaten to confuse the public about the high quality medical care that we uniquely deliver to the people of our state, insured or uninsured, as well as what must be done to meet the medical needs of our community today and in the future.

While seemingly made in the public’s best interest, some attacks are meant to undermine UNM and limit choice and competition.

Lovelace Health Systems, a private, for-profit health care provider, is now openly championing this public debate, stating that it would be willing to enter into a “bed sharing agreement” with UNM in order to ease overcrowding.

This may sound like a reasonable offer on the surface, and certainly UNM will explore it, but it’s important to note that hospitals are not hotels. Quality health care is dependent not just on beds, but on state of the art, modern medical facilities, on expert medical teams that work side by side on behalf of their patients, and on highly specialized surgeons and physicians who cannot do what they need to do from outsourced hospital rooms with limited resources.

Missing from this bed sharing proposal is any discussion of the importance of a team of health care providers — the highly trained primary and specialty care physicians, surgeons, physician extenders, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, allied health professionals, and dedicated support staff — and the integrated electronic medical records and clinical operations essential for the delivery of high quality, integrated health care.

What our community may not appreciate is that for many life-threatening medical conditions such as cancer, the “order” in which a patient is treated by various physician specialists and the integrated care provided by a patient’s collaborative health care team makes all the difference in their chance for survival.

These physicians are part of a large team working hand in hand on a daily basis to provide medical, social, psychological, spiritual and nutritional support for our patients and their families. The proper care of a cancer patient in the hospital, where our patients are often extremely ill, further requires the coordinated expertise of a wide range of physician specialists, including experts in infectious disease, cardiology, and gastroenterology. Picking up this team, or a portion of this team, to provide an “elective procedure” at another hospital is not possible or cost effective. Nor would it provide the care that our patients deserve.

The UNM Cancer Center, and other components of the UNM Health System, has received outstanding “best in practice” ratings from many national accrediting agencies that inspect and certify health systems for the quality of their care. These quality standards must be part of any discussion regarding patient transfers. Our concern applies not just to patients with cancer, but also those with other life-threatening conditions.

A second major concern regarding the proposed “bed sharing arrangement,” is the right of every patient to choose where and by whom they receive their health care. This important patient right, retained in health care reform, is something that UNM Hospital and all of our physicians stand squarely behind. Would this bed sharing agreement attempt to require UNM Hospital to transfer patients who did not want to be transferred? Such a plan is not legal or acceptable.

At this time, UNM Hospital is proposing, and is in great need of, several facility improvements and expansions. Due to ever-growing demand for quality health care in the United States, upgrades are constantly on the horizon for all medical institutions to meet federal standards.

This is why UNM has saved and planned properly over the years to build and continually provide the facilities to deliver the high quality, high tech, highly specialized care New Mexicans so desperately need.