S.F.-Stanford Hospital Merger Plan Assailed

Nurses and union leaders lashed out Wednesday at a plan to merge medical centers at UC San Francisco and Stanford University.

Representatives from a coalition of health care and UC San Francisco hospital employees complained to the UC Board of Regents that the proposal would mean thousands of layoffs and diminished patient care.

“Every merger in the history of the world has always resulted in massive layoffs,” said Spike Kahn of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents a majority of UC San Francisco Medical Center’s 8,000 staffers.

“What we’re asking is that [the regents] talk to the unions and negotiate before they give away the medical center,” Kahn said. “How can they just give this away?”

A committee of regents is considering the plan to relinquish UC San Francisco Medical Center to a new private, nonprofit institution and merge the hospital with its longtime rival, the Stanford Medical Center. The new organization overseeing the medical centers would continue to manage separate operations in San Francisco and Stanford.

Hospital officials say the plan would save money, offer more services for patients and create better training for doctors.

“A stable medical center will help ensure that we’ll have the best opportunity to train physicians for the future,” UC San Francisco spokeswoman Carol Fox said. “That’s our main mission.”

No vote was taken at Wednesday’s meeting, which included a closed-door session with the regents’ Committee on Health Services. The regents may decide whether to proceed with the merger at their next meeting, June 20-21.

Committee Chairman Tirso del Junco assured the audience that the regents will not make a rash decision about the merger.

However, some health care workers said that the public is being left out of the decision-making process and that UC San Francisco, one of the city’s largest employers, is financially sound. Others complained that the possibility of a merger was leaving workers in limbo.

“We work in a very stressful environment as it is,” UC San Francisco pediatric nurse Susan Cieutat said. “When there’s no information, people assume the worst.”