A war of words over the future of DePaul hospital

NORFOLK

A Bold Vision Of Caring For The Community, touts a promotional flyer from Bon Secours Hampton Roads Health System of its plan to reorganize.

Act now - the life you save could be your own, warns a full-page ad in The Virginian-Pilot paid for by the city of Norfolk. In it, its sponsors warn of the dire effect they believe Bon Secours' vision will have on its DePaul Medical Center.

In advance of a public hearing next week, the war of words between the Norfolk city officials and Bon Secours has become especially heated - and costly. Norfolk expects to spend about $50,000 with a local public relations firm hired to help a citizens group, DePaul Emergency 134, get the word out, said Bernard Pishko, Norfolk city attorney.

While that's public money, Pishko questioned how anyone could even think to question the city's spending of it.

"No doubt about it, the city is working toward adequate hospitals. The city wants health care for its people," Pishko said. "There's a humongous issue here. It is a life-and-death one."

Besides, Pishko said, what the city is spending is a "pittance" compared to what nonprofit Bon Secours has spent on marketing its vision - money he said it should be spending on health care.

"They're spending a small fortune in their spin on abandoning their services to the poor," Pishko said. He added that Bon Secours has held expensive catered events where they have been "plying people with drinks and shrimp cocktail."

Perhaps not surprisingly, Bon Secours sees things differently.

"It's really disheartening to see the city questioning the mission of the Sisters of Bon Secours," said Lynne Zultanky, Bon Secours spokeswoman. "These types of negative comments do not advance the cause of health care for the citizens of Norfolk."

Zultanky declined to offer a figure for how much the Roman Catholic health system has spent on advertising and marketing of its reorganization plan. She also declined to comment on whether the city funding of the DePaul Emergency 134 group was appropriate, saying that the back-and-forth in the media was counterproductive.

"These are emotional and exhausting one-way conversations," Zultanky said. "We really would prefer that we sit down and discuss the community health needs of the citizens of Norfolk."

The disagreement over the future of DePaul erupted publicly in June when Norfolk withdrew its support for Bon Secours' plan to reorganize.

Bon Secours officials have stressed that DePaul is losing too much money to be sustainable, with $7 million in losses expected this fiscal year. Underscoring that, Bon Secours took 30 of DePaul's beds out of service on Wednesday.

Bon Secours officials see their plan as a way to serve growing populations while maintaining the hospital's Catholic ministry in Norfolk, which has done high levels of charity care.

Under the proposal, which must be approved by the state health commissioner, Bon Secours would build a new, but greatly downsized, 64-bed hospital. Ninety of DePaul's current 238 licensed beds would be transferred to a new proposed hospital in the Princess Anne section of Virginia Beach and 48 of Bon Secours Maryview Medical Center's beds in Portsmouth would be transferred to a proposed new hospital in northern Suffolk.

After the state health commissioner's office rejected a similar plan Bon Secours submitted last year, Norfolk hired a health care consultant who determined that DePaul should have 134 beds, with a larger intensive care unit and emergency department.

"The need for beds is not as great as it was, but what DePaul is proposing is not enough," said Bruce Holbrook, leader of DePaul Emergency 134, which was started to support the city's plan. "It's simply not enough."

Holbrook is a past member of the Bon Secours DePaul Health Foundation and a longtime Norfolk resident. Part of the problem is that "DePaul is being run by people from out of town," he said of Maryland-based Bon Secours Health System, which has divisions in several states.

DePaul Emergency 134 is listed as a citizens group, but its work is primarily paid for by the city of Norfolk, which has commissioned the services of the public relations firm Goldman & Associates.

"The city funded our services as part of the education campaign for the city," said Dean Goldman, the Norfolk's firm's president.

Goldman said the firm designed and is managing DePaul Emergency's Web site, helping with a letter-writing campaign and encouraging people to go to the public hearing in Chesapeake. He said they're looking into the possibility of providing transportation to the hearing.

Since the Web site became publicly known at the end of last week, it typically has had between 70 and 100 visits a day, said Audrey Knoth, executive vice president at Goldman.

Knoth said that those who are visiting "are really going to each page, studying the documents.... They're very interested in this issue, they're studying the details of it."

Nancy Young, (757) 446-2947, nancy.young@pilotonline.com