Two-thirds of the 50,000 people with chronic diseases who seek outpatient care at Cook County Hospital each year receive inadequate care or no care at all because of crowded facilities and inadequate staffing, hospital doctors told the county board Friday.
The doctors and nurses also testified that patients have to wait up to eight hours to receive emergency room care and that other Chicago hospitals have refused to help them with the overcrowding.
Dr. Elizabeth Feldman, a member of the House Staff Association at the hospital, said 30,000 outpatients a year with diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, pneumonia and emphysema as well as alcohol- and drug-related illnesses are forced to see a doctor other than the one who first diagnosed and treated them or seek outpatient treatment at city-operated medical clinics.
”Some of them probably go without any follow-up treatment at all because they can`t get in anywhere,” she said. ”The one-third that we are able to see at County Hospital have a wait of several months after initial
treatment.”
After the testimony at a public hearing on the proposed $1.018 billion 1986 county budget, County Board President George Dunne said he ”doubted”
that patients had to wait as long for treatment as the doctors testified.
”But I can see where somebody may have to see a different doctor when they come back.
”You have to understand that we are dealing with a bunch of dissidents” who, he said, want the hospital staffed at levels too high for the number of patients treated. ”We`re running a public hospital and we can`t have people sitting on their duffs,” he said.
The doctors and nurses were testifying against the proposed elimination of about 450 positions, that would include 150 to 200 layoffs. They also asked for salary increases, which are not included in the proposed budget.
Dr. Ann Morrison, secretary of the House Staff Association, said an experimental program to relieve overcrowding by sending tuberculosis patients to Provident Hospital is a ”fiasco” because only 6 patients whose condition had stabilized agreed to be transferred there, far short of the 15 the board had expected would be transferred.
Morrison testified that when the intensive care unit was so full last month eight patients had to be sent to regular wards and at least five other hospitals in the city refused to take some of the patients ”even though they were assured that the hospital would reimburse them fully for their care.”
”This bodes ill for future cooperative efforts such as contracting out,” she said.
Morrison told the board that some commissioners had told her that they were trying the contract arrangement because of ”pressure” from Gov. James Thompson to help the private hospitals after he cut their level of Medicaid reimbursement.
Other doctors complained about inadequate and malfunctioning equipment and supplies. Dr. Rachel Rubin, president of the House Staff Association, said relatives of patients have had to bring in extra blankets for patients because of inadequate heating.
Dr. Steven Schwimmer, another House Staff Association member, warned that the hospitals load of about 5 AIDS patients on any given day will increase dramatically in the next two years because the number of patients with the disease expected to be treated there will rise to about 570 a year.
