Riverview to Stop Accepting New Patients
May 24, 2007

Hospital Will Halt Admissions June 1

By Patricia Anstett
Free Press Medical Writer

St. John Health will stop all inpatient admissions to its Detroit Riverview Hospital by June 1 as it works to close the hospital by June 30.

Riverview president Joseph Tasse said the earlier closing of elective inpatient admissions is needed for an orderly transition of patient care. In other developments:

• The hospital's emergency department no longer will take major trauma cases, such as people in serious car crashes. It will stay open 24 hours a day for a year. St. John hopes to open an urgent care center after that in the hospital's east-side community, along Detroit's riverfront.

• After June 14, remaining hospital patients will be transferred to other St. John facilities.

• Pharmacy, laboratory and other services will be closed by mid-June.

• Doctors can remain in offices next to the hospital for one year, at least, as will a federally funded health clinic on Riverview's grounds.

• Some 119 full-time employees at Riverview have gotten jobs in the St. John system. About 100 doctors also are expected to find jobs in the system. St. John hopes to find jobs for about 400 of 1,050 full-time health care workers at Riverview.

Warren-based St. John Health has been meeting with community groups concerned about planning for an orderly transition of care for Riverview patients.

Nine of 10 Riverview patients have Medicaid or Medicare insurance. Most of the rest are uninsured.

"We need to get beyond ourselves to plan regionally," said the Rev. Patrick Gahagen, a leader of the community health group Metropolitan Organizing Strategy Enabling Strength (MOSES). He has been pastor of Immanuel Lutheran Church on Detroit's east side for nine years. "Metro Detroit is so fragmented -- a small-box mentality that plays out in its churches, business and hospitals," he said.

Citing projected losses of $23 million by June 30, the St. John system announced plans in April to sell Riverview to the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, which hopes to move its clinical operations there by next year.

The Detroit Medical Center has filed a lawsuit against Karmanos, its longtime clinical partner, to stop the move, alleging that Karmanos would be breaking numerous contractual obligations with the DMC.

A hearing is to be held in July in Wayne County Circuit Court.

Riverview is one of the last hospitals on Detroit's east side. Administrators at Detroit's Henry Ford Hospital and the Detroit Medical Center have expressed concern that Riverview's closing will overwhelm their emergency and psychiatry departments.

Eliot Joseph, president and chief executive of St. John Health, said his hospitals, as well as Ford and DMC, have adequate capacity to accept Riverview patients.

Contact PATRICIA ANSTETT at 313-222-5021 or panstett@freepress.com.