Quality of UC patient care under scrutiny

BY KEVIN TRUONG
A state senate committee plans to investigate the quality of patient care at University of California medical centers, after a recent union report alleged that the quality of care at the facilities has declined in recent years.

Up until 2011, medical centers had to give a portion of their revenue to the UC Office of the President where it was pooled for redistribution. A policy change in 2011 allowed UC campuses and their medical centers to keep their revenue, but pay a tax based on their revenues back to the UC.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, a union that represents employees at the medical centers, released the report last month. The union in the report claims that the changes have led to administrative decisions that are motivated by increasing revenues instead of providing quality patient care.

Widespread short staffing of the medical centers as well as increases in the hiring of non-permanent workers are examples of declining patient care quality cited in the report.

The number of hours outsourced for various jobs, such as licensed vocational nurses and anesthesia technicians, increased 500 times at the UC San Francisco Medical Center between 2008 to 2011, according to the AFSCME report.

Todd Stenhouse, a spokesman for the union, said many people who contributed to the report work within the UC medical system, and are invested in delivering quality care to every patient in the system.

He said that the comprehensive report utilized firsthand accounts, budgets, inpatient discharge data and state public health watchdog reports.

The report also cited findings from some third-party sources, including the Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit organization that aims to increase the safety, quality and affordability of health care, according to its website. Last November, the Leapfrog Group gave the UCLA Medical Center a failing grade for patient safety in its review of hospitals across the country.

Officials at the medical center have since responded to Leapfrog’s rating, questioning the methodology used to evaluate the hospital.

Kathryn Lybarger, the president of AFSCME 3299, said she thinks the UC’s main concern should be the quality of patient care at its medical centers.

“The UC is a taxpayer-funded institution and it’s Californians who put in upwards of $300 million a year to pay for the medical centers,” Lybarger said.

The state’s lawmakers have also started looking into the claims made in AFSCME Local 3299’s report.

Ed Hernandez, a California state senator and chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, recently announced his intention to investigate the report’s findings.

“(The) report raises a number of serious issues, including whether the reduction in staffing levels for rank-and-file workers at UC hospitals is negatively impacting patient care,” Hernandez said in a statement last month. “The UC system can expect the Legislature to look at these issues carefully in the coming months.”

The UC has denied the claims about the quality of patient care in its medical centers made in the union’s report.
AFSCME Local 3299 and the UC are currently negotiating the labor contracts for the employees in the union.

Dianne Klein, a UC spokeswoman, said she is skeptical of the claims made by the union and instead attributes the report to a union tactic of bargaining in the media, rather than through the collective bargaining process.

Klein said the union and the UC are currently at an impasse in contract negotiations because the union has not agreed to pension reforms in their labor contract that would require them to pay more.

The UC has brought in a state mediator to do fact-finding, which is the required procedure during an impasse in labor negotiations, Klein said.

The report states that at UC medical centers between 2009 and 2012, management growth rose 38 percent and payroll costs for managers grew by 50 percent bringing total yearly salary costs for managers to almost $300 million.

Stenhouse said he disagrees with increases in executive pay and new debt in the face of decreasing funds and short staffing for patient care. With more patients entering the health care system, Stenhouse said he thinks UC medical centers’ priority should be providing the best care possible to patients.

“Now you have (President Barack Obama’s) Affordable Care Act about to be fully implemented,” Stenhouse said. “You have millions of new patients entering the health care system and you have this pattern of short staffing (at the UC) that does impact patients.”

The Senate Committee on Health will soon look into scheduling an informational hearing to evaluate the AFSCME report’s findings, according to a statement from Hernandez’s office.

[Source]: Daily Bruin