D.C. General Hospital Supporters Plan to Take Protests to Congress

By: Robyn Melton

Posted: 2/22/01

They have protested, they have held town meetings, and now advocates of keeping D.C. General Hospital open are taking their case to Congress.

“If we have to go to Congress, that’s what we have to do,” said Loretta Owens, who was born at D.C. General Hospital. “We put them into office, and if they’re not going to listen to the people that put them there, then we need to take them out.”

Owens and several community activists and leaders held an emergency town meeting at the Union Temple Baptist Church in Southeast last Tuesday to vent their anger at city officials for deciding to refer D.C. General patients to Greater Southeast Hospital, once the hospital officially closes.

According to the members at the town meeting, residents who would normally go to D.C. General would be able to get diagnosis and prescriptions by Greater Southeast. More beds will be added and a new system will be enforced; however, the bid made no commitment to build a new hospital.

In efforts to accommodate Southeast residents for the loss of D.C. General, Greater Southeast Hospital was selected in an unanimous vote on Friday and Saturday by panels of officials representing the financial control board, Mayor Anthony Williams, the city’s chief financial officer; Natwar Gandhi and the city council.

Consequently, D.C General will be replaced by a private medical network that will begin work April 1.

Francis Smith, the control board’s executive director, said Greater Southeast was chosen not only because it costs less, but also because it has a track record in healthcare.

Now negotiators are confident that the city will conclude a deal with Greater Southeast, which seeks a package worth more than $415 million over five years.

During the meeting, Dr. Abdul Alim Muhammad, director of Abundant Life Clinic in Washington, D.C., said he believed that Greater Southeast was a ridiculous choice.

“D.C. General should be taking over Greater Southeast,” Muhammad said. “Southeast already has 228 acute beds, where are they going to put 187 more people? In the basements, broom closets, parking lots or cafeterias?”

Muhammad likened the city’s decision to a game of musical chairs. “Instead, though, it’s musical hospital beds," he said. "And when the music stops if someone doesn’t have a bed, they’re going to die.”

But Ivan C. A. Walks, director of the city’s Public Health Department, said there is no comparison between the existing system and the one that Greater Southeast would create.

“We’re in the neighborhoods, knocking on doors explaining to residents, because they don’t know what it means to shut the hospital down,” said Owens, who also represents the technical and clerical workers in hospitals, health clinics and school programs.

“If you shut D.C. General down, it’s too far for residents in that Ward to travel,” she said. “If they have a gunshot wound or serious injury, they’re going to die trying to get there.”

Advocates of keeping the hospital open scheduled a meeting today at 10 a.m. at Capitol South Metro Station to go and lobby Congress.

“At a point like this, people cannot refuse to fight,” said Lynne Speed, a speaker at the town meeting. “There is no going along with anything when you’re talking about life or death. We need a few several hundred people, at least one for each 500 Congress members. Now is the time to escalate the fight.”

E-mail Robyn Melton at Community_News1@excite.com.