Comment / By Marc Levin / Feb. 13, 2009, 9:15 a.m.

One question not addressed in this article is what would be the mortality rate if St. Joseph had no heart program at all? The delay in treatment because of the need to be transferred to Redding or Santa Rosa, especially with the complications of weather on air ambulance flights, could mean that a program that has room for improvement is better than no program at all.

Comment / By Kathryn Donahue / Feb. 13, 2009, 12:46 p.m.

In all the numbers, and talk about “standardized processes developed from evidenced based guidelines” no one address the elephant in the room, the lack of nurses. It is not the nursing shortage that has produced this effect. It is the working conditions in which nurses are required to function. The words “goal of perfect care” are easy to state. What nurses are demanding….increase nursing staff. The Lean Toyota Model requires minimal staffing, work faster,staff to numbers,(we do have a ratio law in California), not to patient acuity. For each patient added to a nurses’ work load, above what is safe, as determined by the nurse who evaluates the patient’s “acuity” status, mortality goes up. This fact is well documented in scientific studies. The SJHS must include this piece, and staff appropriately, if they expect changes in patient outcome statistics. The SJHS must address the need to restore safe nurse staffing levels to protect patients from risk caused by managed care driven staffing changes.

Comment / By unanonymous / Feb. 14, 2009, 12:57 p.m.

according to the numbers, Redwood Memorial is the best place to get health care. Something that goes against conventional wisdom.

Comment / By loretta JKM / Feb. 20, 2009, 12:12 a.m.

No longer is St. Joes ran the way of the sisters.They risk patients lives to save a buck.Katherine Donahue is correct in her comments about staffing issues and dangers to patients and liability to the nurses, with too many high risk patients to care for at once.

They ask the public for donations,to benefit the community as a whole, Yet behind closed doors, St. Josephs Health care system ,makes decisions that are detrimental to the public their mission statement claims to serve. Poor,disabled, And yes Children. That is most evident in their recent decision to shut down the home health respite program that served medically fragile children.There was no other such nursing program in this county.Their spokes person stated in the Oct. 08 issue of the times standard, that their resources needed to go to a larger community interest.Do we need more medically fragile children for them to be considered worthy of care? who is this larger community interest? the richer? the well insured? Most of these kids funding came from regional center contracts,and some had medical or private insurance. who knows what the children of the future may have had for financial resource. St joes Health system didnt care. Hmmm. They found funds though to match the donated funds ( 2 million) the McClean foundation donated .Look at some of the board members of the McClean foundation youll notice a name on there who happens to be a community services advocate for st. Joes. She refused to return a phone call regarding the closing of the program. Rude Ceos called me instead. Sounding more and more like its all about who,s in who’s pockets like any other corporately corrupt, organization in our society today. They except money from the public under the guise of the sisters mission statement,while they quietly close off the public members it was designed to serve, from receiving the services they deserve from their local health care system. Seems wrong coming from a hospitol that made itself the monopoly in this town. The hospitol and home health network,are under the same umbrella of the st. joes health care system. In reference to the closing program , I was told by CEOs,In sept. 08, that i” wasn’t supposed to know about this”. They’ve Tried to call it Regional centers program, but Regional center(RCRC) was just a source of contracted funds for their(yes St Joes) home health respite nursing program. RCRC has never been in the business of running a nursing program. All hiring and the recent firing of the nurses was done by St. Joes. The program is closing and the nurses are losing their jobs and benefits, some have been loyal employees for over 15 years. The families with severely ill children, are losing their respite nurses and left scrambling,along with RCRC, to find an out of town vendor to come here and set up and hire some nurses to step in and cover the loss of a vital one of a kind service, once offered to the community by st. joes health care system.