On December 10, 1998, Mitchell Katz, Director of Public Health, presented then-mayor Willie L. Brown with a White Paper exploring various options for rebuilding Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center.

In the White Paper, Katz notes that “Of Laguna Honda Hospital’s operational beds, the vast majority (1,027) are devoted to long-term skilled nursing beds” (page 8).

Katz concludes that if sufficient funding is not appropriated to build alternative care facilitiess in San Francisco as was done in Oregon, that San Francisco will be short 2,380 skilled nursing beds by the year 2020 (page 10).  In his discussion of various options to rebuild LHH, option number four was to build several smaller facilities throughout the City.  In building several smaller facilities throughout the City, Katz noted that “operating costs would be significantly higher because of the loss of economies of scale running 1,200 beds at LHH”" (page 14), and that “building several smaller facilities would be markedly more expensive” (page 15).

Indeed, Katz notes that should the City consider building 12 ninety-nine-bed facilities rather than a single 1,200-bed facility would cost (in 1994 dollars) $171 million more than his eventual recommendation to re-build 1,200 skilled nursing beds on the current site of Laguna Honda.

So how did we get from rebuilding 1,200 beds on Laguna Honda’s present site, to scaling back the full “scope” by potentially cutting 300–400 beds from the new facility?

Other disturbing questions remain unanswered:  

• Why is current Mayor Gavin Newsom hiding from the public, completely afraid of discussing the situation of the LHH Replacement Facility openly with the public who elected him into office?  
  
• Why will the Mayor not meet directly with the physicians of Laguna Honda Hospital? 
  
• Why is he delaying meeting with Sister Miriam Walsh from LHH’s pastoral care department, who has serious concerns about the situation at LHH?  
  
• Why has the public not learned of the results of the meeting former City Attorney Louise Renee demanded to have with the Mayor?  
  
• Why has the Replacement Project project director’s recommendations for the size of the replacement facility now been delayed until January 2005, despite the fact that the bids were due back in mid-October?
  
• Why is the Board of Supervisors colluding on not holding public hearings quickly and transparently about the use of general obligation bond money and tobacco settlement revenue for the LHH rebuild?
  
• Why is the City considering changing the use of LHH’s skilled nursing beds to other uses, after our City father’s led its citizens to believe in paid ballot arguments in favor of the 1999 Proposition A that San Francisco desperately needed LHH’s skilled nursing beds?
  
• Why did Health Commission president Edward Chow, MD, argue in a 1999 AsianWeek guest opinion article that the Asian Pacific American community relies heavily of LHH’s skilled nursing beds, and yet — fast forwarding to 2004 — Commissioner Chow has remained completely silent about the dire situation facing the APA community should LHH be massively downsized by losing up to one-third of beds utilized so heavily by Chow’s APA constituents?  For that matter, why have AsianWeek’s Chairwoman, Florence Fang and the Fang family not used the bully pulpit of the AsianWeek newsweekly to expose the potential loss of LHH beds, and loss of LHH jobs facing the broader APA community, who make up a sizable percentage of LHH’s workforce?

Most importantly, why are these decisions being discussed behind closed doors, without the public being informed about what its government is doing?

Newsom is reportedly interested in having open dialog with his citizenry, but he is doing everything he can to avoid meeting the very public he was elected to serve.

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Copyright (c) 2004 by Committee to Save LHH.  All rights reserved.  This work may not be reposted anywhere on the Web, or reprinted in any print media, without express written permission.  E-mail the Committee to Save LHH.