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Indybay Feature

Patients Panic Over Pain Clinic Closure

by Lynda Carson (lyndacarson [at] excite.com)
Oakland Sinks Ever Further Into The Realm
Of The Mad Hatters Tea Party While A Scheme
Is Underway To Deprive The Chronicly Ill From
Medications That Allow Them To Live! It Has Brought About The Birth Of The Painfighters!
Patients Panic Over Pain Clinic Closure
Non-Profit Sutter Health Betrays Patients
By Lynda Carson 7/17/02

Oakland Ca-Rumors regarding the imminent closure of the Alta Bates Summit Medical Center's Pain Clinic became a nightmarish reality for a thousand patients before they ever knew what had just hit them.

In a terse June 10, 2002 letter signed by Warren Kirk, President and CEO of Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, patients started to one by one be notified
about the official closure of the Pain Management Service at Summit Medical Center as of July 15, 2002. Some patients have not been notified about the pain clinic closure until as recent as a week ago claim some of the patients.

Nearly a third of the patients are known as Pump Patients and need to receive refills of medication in 28 day cycles, and some need refills every three weeks
due to higher more frequent doses of medication such as morphine.

The horror and shock is still setting in claims Leona Simms, a longtime Oakland resident. Where will we go to get pain management treatment if Medicare and
Medi-Cal coverage is not accepted at the recommended facilities adds another? According to Caroline Kemp a Summit spokesperson, two-thirds of the patient insurer payments for treatment come from Medicare and Medi-Cal which fails to offer enough money to keep the clinic open.

Indeed, there seems to be a catch 22 going on. The patients claim that the Summit recommended pain clinics their being referred to do not have room for
more patients, and none of them will accept Medicare or Medi-Cal coverage because the payments fail to cover the costs of the treatment. Many patients
of Summit have used Medicare and Medi-Cal as insurance to cover their treatment since the clinic first opened five years ago, and now patients at the clinic claim that they haven't been able to receive medication for the past month, been able to see their doctors, or obtain their medical files.

Many patients now claim to be totally stressed out by what has occured, and are feeling frantic to find a solution before time runs out on them.

To counter the claims of the patients, spokesperson Kemp states that the clinic may have officialy closed upon July 15, 2002 but added, Summit will help the
1,000 patients find other treatment centers as an alternative.

The closure of the clinic prompted the formation of a group known as the Painfighters to oppose this scandalous behaviour by Sutter Health Care Systems
and Alta Bates Summit Medical Center. The Painfighters are patients who have united to expose the wrongdoing by those who closed the pain clinic. Painfighters demand that the clinic remain open because their lives depend upon it.

Lisa Rubins a patient at Summit, states that 99% of the patients have chronic conditions. Pain makes it even harder for them to live. Clients have tried other pain
clinics to no avail Rubin adds, and claims that this pain clinic gave them back their lives. They can once again make friendships, become mobile, go to movies, restaurants, and join society in the normal ways of life most people take for granted. Many of the patients would be bedridden if not for the magic of this clinic says Rubin.

Rubin wants the public to be aware that on a daily basis the patients crash very hard at the end of a long day, and it is very difficult to start the new day. But once
they are up and running they can function for periods throughout the day like most others who are not in the world of the chronicly ill.

Word first reached the public about the plight of these patients on Soul Beat International Television when Beverly Blythe invited members of the Painfighters
to be guests on her show known as Community Cares.

Members of the Painfighters next appeared at the Oakland City Council Meeting on Tuesday July 9, 2002 when during the Open Forum session of the meeting
three Painfighters pleaded for help. This gained the attention of Councilwoman Jane Brunner who has scheduled a Hearing for August 1, 2002 at four p.m., in
Hearing RM number two. According to Leona Simms, the Hearing will include politicians such as Wilma Chan, Nate Miley, and Don Perata in hopes of keeping
the pain clinic open. Painfighters accept any public support that they can garner to keep the pain clinic open and urge people to contact them at 510/ 652-3388.

During a protest rally outside the steps of Summit on July 15, 2002 a dozen or so Painfighters sprang into action to gain even more attention to the plight of the
patients being deprived of their beloved clinic, and many had much to reveal about their situation.

Patient Philip Morris claimed that no one notified him of the clinic closure, and he realized what occurred when he found a bolted door to the clinic during his last visit.

The pharmacy of Summit notified patient Tracy Titus that her benefits were cut off when she went in for a refill, and the horror stories continue to grow with the fiasco arising from the lack of a humane process to assist these desperately ill people as their lives are being ripped apart by a mercyless system. Titus states that she has not been pain-free for the last 15 years, and wonders how many will die as the direct result of the clinic closure.

Upon the eve of the July 15 rally, Lisa Rubin and Leona Simms worked late into the morning until around two a.m., for a long faxing session after putting together a flier and Press Release to go out to media outlets throughout the Bay Area. They were then up again a few hours later to alert other Painfighters to join them at Summit for the 2 p.m. rally. It worked, and the Painfighters group is growing ever larger as the story of
their plight hits the public domain, and they try to reach other patients of the pain clinic being dumped Summit/Sutter Health Care System.

Another member of the Painfighters group is six foot tall ex-Womens Warrior Basketball Champ Dee Stanvold who has been in a wheelchair since her 7/11/72
accident which left her with four surgeries during the past five years. She is due for another surgery on Thursday July 18, and tries to make the best of it. Added to her concerns is the loss of the pain clinic and the feelings of wanting to commit suicide
if the clinic fails to remain open.

Stanvold states that she became a patient of the Summit pain clinic around 3-4 years ago, has been under treatment by doctors Halperin, Miller, and Roberts, and is known
as a pump patient.

Stanvold now a frustrated artist, first tried a trial pain pump on March 11, 1999, and since went on to have an implanted pain pump which was placed in the left side of her abdoman. The pain pump (size of a muffin) resides inside a mesh bag and delivers a timely precise dosage of medication (dilaudid) to the area needed in her body to kill the pain. A hose is attached to the pump, with a needle attached at the other end of the hose. It took three tries of inserting the needle before it was finally placed where it did not create even more pain while doing it's task inside her body. Stanvolds pain pump needs refilling about every three weeks due to the heavy dosage of dilaudid needed to keep pain to a minimum of levels so that she may function on a daily basis.

Before becoming a pump patient, they (doctors) hooked her up to a "tens unit-stimulator" which disrupted pain in the nerves by delivering a shock to the system, and could be operated either manually or by a computerized system.

This pain clinic has three doctors who smoothly function together as a team to be effective in giving the treatment needed for the chonicly ill. Dr. Halperin is a pain specialist, Dr. Miller an M.D./medication specialist, and Dr. Roberts is a neuro psychologist.

The Marquee de Sade was also a pain specialist, but of a different type approach to the subject.

In a recent letter to Congresswoman Barbara Lee, Rubins and Simms write;
"Pain Management is a highly specialized service, encompassing many modalities including surgeries, psychological counseling and complicated medications. Many of us have experienced other pain clinics to no avail. We believe this clinic to be the most professional, caring and effective treatment we have been blessed to receive. If this clinic closes, Oakland residents will lose a valuable medical resource, and those on Medical and Medicare will have no access to decent pain services at all".

Painfighters united in the struggle are LEONA F. SIMMS, LISA RUBIN, PATRICIA SMALLEY,
TRACY TITUS, SANDY MORRIS, JOYCE LETTS, FRANK MORENO, MORRIS SCHOONOVER, MICHELLE ROUSEY, FLOYD LANNING, NANCY WARD, DEE STRANVOLD, etc...They are professionals trying to regain their lives through pain management.

Alta Bates Summit Medical Center was created by a merger with Sutter Health Care Systems which was heavily opposed by consumer unions. In a losing bid to stop the merger, Attorney General Bill Lockyer filed an antitrust suit on August 10, 1999 after the Federal Trade Commission failed to object to the alleged non-profit's scheme.

Sutter Health Care System claims to be a non-profit, employs nearly 33,000 people, runs 10 medical research centers, 26 acute care hospitals, serves 100 communities, and claims to have relationships with approximately 5,000 doctors.

Sutter Health Care System was created in a January 1996 merger between Sacramento-based Sutter Health and Bay Area-based California Health Care System. During 2001, $4 Billion in net patient revenues were recorded for the overall Sutter Health Care System Network.

Sutter Health Board of Directors are, Ralph E. Andersen, Mary Jane Armacost, Kenni Friedman, Van R. Johnson, Lawrence G. Mohr, Jr., Dennis O'Connell, Gary L. Depolo, Michael A. Roosevelt, Jim Gray, Theodore 'Ted' Saenger, Robert B. Swanson, M.D., Sharon Y. Woo, and Don Wreden, M.D.

According to Summits web site it states, and I quote;
Pain Management Service-- ( http://www..summitmed/pain.htm )
Unrelieved pain, according to the American Pain Society Principles of Analgesic Use, is the most common patient complaint. Furthermore, many patients silently and unnecessarily tolerate inadequately relieved pain.

Summit Medical Center's Pain Management Service was introduced on March 18, 1996 and is designed to make pain management accessible to all patients and referring physicians. In short, the program wants to provide a simple "one-stop-shopping" form of pain management. This program enables professionals from more than twenty subspecialties to assess, diagnose, and treat pain from the most common daily aches to the most difficult problems encountered in advanced cancer, and in post-surgical and chronic pain.

For additional information, please contact Dr. Michael Halperin at (510) 869-6832.

Apparently, the Board of Directors from Sutter Health Care Systems disagree with the prognosis of Dr. Michael Halperin, and the reputation of Sutter to be known for destroying good hospitals continues to gain ground and is based on more than the ravings of one of their own M.D.s from a different hospital.

On November 10, 1997 during a speech to the Auburn Rotary Club about the destruction of a community hospital by Sutter Health, Dr. William Kirby chief of staff, for Sutter Auburn Faith Hospital stated the following;

Sutter Health represents the most malicious, two faced, duplicitous organization that I have ever dealt with. The people that work for them will look you straight in the face and lie. Nothing that they say can be trusted. They are absolutely dishonest. They are driven by POWER, GREED, PROFIT and CONTROL They don't really give a DAMN about the quality of patient care. Sutter Health is the primary contributor to the destruction of local health care in Auburn.

The closure of Summits Pain Clinic follows on the heels of the closure of the Cickle Cell Clinic at Summit, and Dee Stanvold believes that they are following the same formula used to close the Cickle Cell Clinic. This time though, Stanvold believes that Sutter/Summit underestimated the resolve of the Painfighters to hold their ground to put up a fight. During the protest rally outside Summit on July 15, someone mentioned the closure of the Childrens Clinic which is being looked into to see if that also occurred.

Oaklanders are screaming out for justice in a town where the crooks seem to be running the system, and it is high time for the Mayor Jerry Brown to explain why Oakland has become the land of torture, murder, mayhem, and corruption.

Let us hope that the Painfighters are successful in reminding Oaklanders not to forget about their needs and to come to their rescue to keep the pain clinic open.

The Painfighters are trying to unite the full one thousand patients of the Pain Clinic before it finally closes it's doors, and demand that it remains open.

Anyone else with a bit of time, energy, and donations to fund this struggle are urged to get involved and chip in to help out. This is a worthy cause.

The Painfighters message to you is that we are all one and the same in this struggle.

All patients and supporters are advised to call 510/ 652-3388 A.S.A.P.

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