Since city leaders first announced that Lakewood Hospital would be “redesigned to fit community needs,” i.e. “transitioned into a wellness campus,” Lakewood City Council has held a number of hearings to explain all sorts of angles to the news. In short, there’s no sense that the Letter of Intent signed with Cleveland Clinic will be done away with; rather, the city is just trying to find ways to “manage.”
The immediate 2016 financial impact of the measure would involve a $1.5- to $1.7-million hit to the city’s general fund. That’s 4 percent of general fund revenues. (Council members later pushed back during a Monday night meeting, saying that the loss could be greater, as it’s possible and likely that salaries and income tax withholdings of the 150-250 wellness campus employees will not proportionally match the salaries and income tax withholdings of the 1,000-plus Lakewood Hospital employees. But that’s one of seemingly hundreds of unknowns at this point.)
The point is: This would be a blow to Lakewood.
“This is going to be a loss,” Council President Mary Louise Madigan said, avoiding the subjunctive. “We know that. We’re trying to manage our future.”
While none of this is final, it sure feels like it at Lakewood City Hall.
On Monday, Finance Director Jennifer Pae took city legislators on a tour of the hospital’s history. She said that Lakewood has never been a company town and that the hospital is but one facet of a diverse tax base.
From 1907 to 1986, Pae said, the hospital’s finances were reported as part of the city’s finances in a self-sustaining enterprise fund. In 1987, the city transferred all real property (and, well, mostly the $36 million of outstanding debt on the hospital) to the Lakewood Hospital Association. City leaders realized, according to Pae, that the city was quickly growing unable to accommodate the hospital’s ballooning debt. In 1997, the Lakewood Hospital Special Revenue fund was created to bring lease payments and EMS run fees back into the city folds.
The historical framework put the hospital in an apparently minor financial role on the city’s budget books — a $1.5-million annual blip in the years since 1987. But opponents to the deal have held that Lakewood Hospital’s importance to the community rises well beyond lease payments and EMS calls — that the deal being cut is a long-term disaster. Many in Lakewood are asking the city simply to wait a minute. The lease with the Cleveland Clinic Foundation runs through 2026, and payments to the city grow by $25,000 every three years (it is currently $1.15 million annually).
Furthermore, and this point has been a bit more shadowy, residents have asked for broadly open dialogue about the $100-million hospital opening in 2016 next to Avon’s Richard E. Jacobs Health Center. As a municipal tax-sharing agreement has been proposed between Lakewood and Avon, many are wondering about the machinations that led to the Letter of Intent in Lakewood. A point of contention in the coffee-shop discourse of Lakewood is that the shuttering of the hospital has been a long-in-the-works open secret. Scene spoke with independent doctors with offices inside Lakewood Hospital back in 2013. Some had reported being forced out of the building (essentially to accommodate this inevitable change). None would speak on the record when asked for interviews.
“[The Cleveland Clinic Foundation] has created the immediate crisis and has or could cause great damage to [the Lakewood Hospital Association], the City and its citizens if the City does not stand up for their rights,” resident Brian Essi wrote in a letter to city leaders, which was later published by the Lakewood Observer.
“Economic development needs to be our highest priority,” Pae said at the meeting. It’s not immediately clear what might financially replace the income tax and lease hit at the corner of Belle and Detroit (the hospital has been property tax-exempt, so any new development would be an automatic increase to the city, schools and county).
Several more meetings will be held on the hospital switch. Ongoing discussion of finances will take place at 6 p.m. April 27 at Lakewood City Hall, and a discussion “of Cleveland Clinic’s commitment to Lakewood” will take place at 6 p.m. April 30 at Lakewood City Hall.
This article appears in Apr 15-21, 2015.
As with any number of issues in the region, those outside the elitist clubhouse are treated like ignorant, doomsday marks if they catch a legit tip or two that are not slickly controlled by PR releases masquerading as hard news in “major” media outlets.
Amazing! The hospital vital to the community should be downsized to “fit community needs?” NEWS FLASH: the “community” extends way beyond Lakewood’s borders. And the fact that Avon is chomping at the bit to quickly fill in the gap shows that we’re being lied to. This just sounds like a covered-up dirty deal. Perhaps the next “transition” should be downsizing Lakewood City Hall. You know, just to “fit the community’s needs.”
The article said the hospital had “36 million dollars of outstanding debt” in 1987, when it was transferred to the Lakewood Hospital Association (LHA), as reported by the Capital Improvement Project.
Q: What is the Capital Improvement Project?
Q: Is the LHA still in debt today,
Q: What caused the hospital to get into debt? Didn’t their patients pay their bills? Did a lot of patients sue the hospital? (The Cleveland Clinic Foundation (CCF) says they want to close Lakewood Hospital because they are still losing money, in 2015 (28 years later.) Why are they still losing money?
The “Save Lakewood Hospital” group, savelakewoodhospital.org says the Clinic is not losing money.
Q: Isn’t the CCF a reputable organization? (Their motto is “World Class Service”). Are they telling the truth about their finances?
I want to help the “Save Lakewood Hospital” cause.
MY SUGGESTION: I think all past patients should come forward to save the hospital. The “Save Lakewood Hospital” group should ask former patients to contact them for information on how to help.
I want to write to the Lakewood City Council to “save” Lakewood Hospital, but I don’t understand what is going on, and how the Clinic can cancel a binding lease, which is valid until 2026. I suspect something else is going on that the public is unaware of.
How many skeletons (literally) are in the closet of Lakewood Hospital that should be revealed to the public?
As a former CCF patient who has leg pain, motor loss, feels ill, and has edema in my abdomen and legs, I went to the Clinic’s main campus and was passed around from one doctor to another, and was never diagnosed in five years. I was left with trouble walking and lost my job, because I am unable to stand or walk too long.
Later I found out that I was never told of abnormal tests. My CCF doctor never told me my x-rays showed a bone had collapse in my right foot, or that I had “boggy edema” and “effusion,” or that my MRI showed motor-axon loss.
By not telling me or treating me, the CCF broke medical laws by not following accepted “standards of care.”
The CCF also did not reply to my complaint to the ombudsman, which was a violation of the Federal Medicare/Medicaid Law called “The Conditions of Participation” (which states hospitals must reply to and investigate complaints in order to receive Medicare/Medicaid reimbursements.)
How can the Clinic can get away with not following the “standards of care,” and breaking Medicare/Medicaid law?
Some patients are even denied further care for making complaints, and this is against the law, also.
Did Lakewood Hospital treat its patients like the CCF main campus treated me?
Why aren’t all former Lakewood hospital patients coming forward to save the hospital? Doesn’t the fact that thousands of former patients are not rallying to save the hospital show what they really know about the hospital?
An investigation into CCF patient care, patient outcome, patient resolution of complaints, patients who were denied care, and patient satisfaction, are all issues that should be studied in relation to why the CCF wants to close Lakewood Hospital.
This investigation could result in a Pulitzer Prize!
Jeanne Coppola