Reading Eagle story demonstrates local lack of interest in health of poor people

By Steve Reinbrecht

Reading needs another health center to serve poor people, so the city housing authority is planning to open one.

That’s right, the Reading Housing Authority, which runs the public housing programs. Not Reading Hospital, of West Reading, whose mission is "to provide compassionate, accessible, high quality, cost effective health care to the community; to promote health; to educate healthcare professionals; and to participate in appropriate clinical research."

Why did the Reading Eagle newspaper bury this story on Page B7? Making sure poor people get good health coverage is important. Ask people in Dallas, where a hospital ER sent home a man with the Ebola virus.

Of course, providing good primary care to everybody is not only an edge against global epidemics. It also makes good business sense, to ensure healthy employees and customers. 

Why is the housing authority working on a health-care center and not the Reading Hospital? Why isn’t the hospital system taking more interest in basic health care in Reading?
Reading Hospital has more ER visits than any other hospital in Pennsylvania. It had more than 133,000 visits in 2013, or an average of 15 an hour, around the clock.

But eight hospitals had more admissions. That make it look like the hospital has too many ER visits. The hospital greatly expanded its ER a few years ago. Maybe it should have spent the money on primary care in the city.

From Reading Health System annual report 

Reading Health System employs 7,300 people, has an annual budget closing in on $1 billion, is building a $350 million surgery building, and has purchased most of the physician practices in the area.

Nevertheless, Berks County doesn’t have enough primary-care doctors, according to the federal government, which designated us a “health professional shortage area – primary care” in August 2012. 

The hospital’s emergency room has become a de facto 24-hour clinic, but at high cost. Reducing the number of unnecessary emergency-room visits would cut medical expenses for everybody.

Many young parents have told me of nights spent waiting in the ER when their children get sick. They are clueless about how to get a family doctor.

According to the Eagle story, 93 percent of the residents’ visits to the ER were for routine care such as disease management and getting prescriptions.

But Reading Hospital apparently is not acting to fill the need. In 2012, the hospital pulled out of its clinic on Penn Street, turning it over to the Greater Berks Health Center, which had about 6,000 patients in 2013, only 10 percent of whom were on private insurance.

St. Joseph, the other Berks Hospital, does run a “family and women’s care” center downtown.

I sent my questions to Reading Hospital’s media office:

• What is Reading Health System’s involvement in plans for a health center to serve poor people in the Oakbrook public-housing development?
• Why was nobody from the Health System mentioned in the story? Was a representative there?
• How much did the Health System provide in 2013 to the Greater Berks Health Center on Penn Street?
• Does the hospital have counselors in the emergency room to meet people while they are waiting for care to explain about getting primary care instead of using the emergency room?
• How does the hospital try to reduce unnecessary ER visits?
• What percent of ER visits are non-emergency?

On Oct. 2, a woman in the office said she’d work on them for me, but I hadn’t heard from her again as of Friday Oct. 10.

In my paranoia, I worry the hospital wanted to give the newspaper a chance to spin the story. 

It’s more likely that no one with any influence really cares about the health needs of poor people in Reading. No, maybe Dan Luckey, head of the housing authority, does. And if anyone can do this he can. 

And I don't know anything about where to put health care centers. But I know these issues should be discussed more publicly.