UPDATE (8/12, 10:48am): The hearing has been postponed again. Once I get a new date, I’ll post it.
Bon Secours Health System is on the move again, this time hoping to relocate another one of its urban Virginia hospitals to the suburbs.
The above quote comes from a Modern Healthcare magazine article published July 12, 1999. Sounds eerily familiar to those of us who are watching the company’s initiatives on Norfolk’s DePaul Medical Center.
The Bon Secours Health System was, according to their website, established in 1983. The company went on a spending spree, acquiring hospitals in a number of states, from Michigan to Florida. Many of those hospitals – like Richmond Community Hospital and Mary Immaculate Hospital in Newport News – serve an inner city population. According to a 2005 article from the same magazine, the health care system struggled to make the acquisitions work. Since 2004, Bon Secours has sold operations in Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Michigan. The company now operates 18 acute care hospitals along with other medical facilities in seven states.
It seems that, as the 1999 article points out, Bon Secours has a pattern of “seeking greener pastures for some of its urban facilities.” The company sought, and gained approval, to move Stuart Circle Hospital from the Fan District in Richmond to “the affluent and growing suburb of Midlothian in Chesterfield County.”
Just prior to their application to move Stuart Circle, they closed the 95-bed historically black Liberty Medical Center in Baltimore, which, according to a Richmond Free Press article from September 1999, had “survived independently for a century, but died three years after it was purchased” by Bon Secours. From that article:
Bon Secours, founded by Catholic nuns in 1824 to provide care to the indigent, has been sowing doubts about that statement with its record of locating area medical operations outside the city..
[…]
…every time Bon Secours makes its changes, it appears to relocate to areas with a smaller presence of poor people and definitely fewer African-Americans.
A couple of earlier moves by Bon Secours:
- in 1996, St. Francis Xavier Hospital in downtown Charleston SC was moved to West Ashley, SC, a “burgeoning suburb”
- In 1998, Richmond Memorial Hospital was moved to Hanover County.
I understand that every entity – even non-profit ones – have to make money in order to survive. And if one reads their 2007 Annual Report to the Community (pdf), you get the impression that they are making money. From page 4:
With the achievement of positive financial indicators this year, our financial future is a bright one. Our bond rating has been upgraded to A by Fitch Ratings. These improvements will allow us to pursue focused growth, take advantage of ministry opportunities, and reinvest in our
communities and key growth markets.
So why the need to downsize DePaul so significantly? Norfolk needs a right-sized hospital and 64 beds just isn’t it. Please let your voice be heard on this issue. The public hearing will be Monday, August 18 at 10am. For more information, check out DePaul Emergency 134.
Earlier posts on the DePaul saga:
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
How long did Depaul “experience a high census”, a census will flucuate and the hospital will make adjustments. That being said, if they only average a 70 bed census (which is according to Depaul), should they build a 134 bed hospital? I don’t think so.
Vivian, your post is close to insuading a “race” issue with Bon Secours.
Mary Iimmaculate is not an “inner city” hospital.
I didn’t say it was an inner city hospital, I said it served an inner city population. That was true when I grew up on the Peninsula. Have they moved it?
Will you be satisfied when enough uneconomic decisions have been forced on them that they close the place altogether?
I have enjoyed my profession(dentist) and find great satisfaction in making a positive difference in people’s lives. But if one of my grandchildren started considering a career in health care in the face of this attitude of entitlement toward health care services, I would have them committed until they regained their sanity.
Mary Immaculate hospital in located in northern Newport News on Denbigh Blvd. It is no an inner city hospital.
linda b,
I don’t dispute that Mary Immaculate hospital is not Inner City, however what demographic does it service? Is it an “inner city population”? I don’t know. I think that is Vivian’s point.
I see from the website that the hospital moved in the early 1980s to its current location. When I was growing up on the Peninsula, the hospital was located in the eastern part of the city and certainly served the inner city. (Interestingly enough, a Google search brings up some conflicting information. Most say the hospital was founded at the turn of the century by Dr. Joseph Buxton, but a few say it was founded by The Bernardine Franciscan Sisters in 1952.)
So it is possible that Mary Immaculate no longer serves an inner city population.
But that doesn’t change the larger point that Bon Secours has purchased inner city hospitals and then either closed them or moved them to other areas.
I think if you look at the demographics in the Denbigh area of Newport News,Vivian,you will note that a substantial number of African-Americans and Orientals live there,especially Blacks.The Denbigh area has become very congested.I know this as I used to live there.My father was a patient at Mary Immaculate and while visiting him there all throughout the summer of 2006 the hospital served many African-Americans as patients.So please don’t go off saying that Bon Secours is dodging people of a certain racial persuasion.They deserve the same standard of quality care as someone with insurance and money to burn.You are so ridiculous when you say Bon Secours buys /builds hospitals and then closes them to escape an “inner city” class of patients.Hospitals often close Vivian because their physical plant/facilities etc are obsolete,broken down,or unable to be streamlined under the present set of circumstances to make them more efficient.You are very close Vivian to insinuating a “race issue” on this posting.And by the way,DePaul isn’t going to close and relocate somewhere else.We want to rebuild on the existing land.Maybe, in order to soothe your “alarmed frantic nerves” we might just build a 100 or so bed hospital instead of 54 beds.You people are just so crazy and frantic.Why the hell should anyone build more than they can fill?And what’s wrong with adding a few beds out in Virginia Beach and Suffolk?Huh?Tell me.Those assholes in Richmond let Sentara do it.So why not us? What’s wrong with a little competition?What’s wrong with giving the citizens a CHOICE?I doubt seriously that Bon Secours will wrestle a sizable patient population away from Sentara.I don’t even know why I am responding to comments on these ridiculous ,absurd and moronic websites,your’s and that stupid DePaul Emergeny 134.You people need to just chill out and get a life with regard to this hospital thing and worry about more important matters like denying that egotistical ,say anything you the ignorant American voter wants to hear, self centered,over the top liberal of a jerk Obama from becoming president.Did you “drink” his Kool-aide?