The president of the University of Toledo dispelled speculation that a sale of the school’s medical center was looming for a trustees meeting Monday after members of a grassroots coalition said they were tipped off to a potential vote.
University President Sharon Gaber told The Blade Saturday the board of trustees will not vote Monday about selling UTMC, the former Medical College of Ohio Hospital, but she acknowledged members will discuss the South Toledo hospital’s financial “shortfalls.”
When asked if Ms. Gaber could commit to not putting UTMC up for sale in the future, the president added, “I can say the board is going to suggest a process to determine what will happen moving forward.”
Former Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner, an organizer of the Save UTMC Citizens Group, told attendees at a town-hall meeting Saturday that Ms. Gaber called him Friday to tell him the board would discuss the hospital’s financial situation, which he said is a projected $25 million deficit for the 2021 fiscal year.
Ms. Gaber denied giving Mr. Finkbeiner a projected deficit for the fiscal year, saying it was “too early” to project those numbers.
“We’ll be discussing the situation,” Ms. Gaber said. “What the board would want people to know is that nothing is pre-determined. We’re going to work through this over the next few months.”
Members of the grassroots group for months now have been holding meetings and news conferences to proclaim their fear of losing the hospital.
When reached by phone on Friday, three members of UT’s board of trustees declined to comment about Monday’s meeting, referring comment to board chairman Mary Ellen Pisanelli. Ms. Pisanelli did not respond to requests for comment Friday; a telephone operator at Welltower, where Ms. Pisanelli is the senior vice president of legal and administration, said she was traveling and unavailable.
Organizers of the Save UTMC group heard speculation midday Friday that a vote about selling UTMC could take place at the upcoming board meeting.
A fifth town-hall meeting for UTMC union workers, faculty, and South Toledo residents had been already scheduled Saturday at Park Church on Harvard Boulevard. But that meeting was quickly reworked into an emergency news conference led by state Sen. Teresa Fedor (D, Toledo) and Mr. Finkbeiner.
The two leaders joined other elected officials and hospital representatives to talk about the many concerns surrounding the futures of UTMC and UT’s College of Medicine and Life Sciences.
The concerns stem from a 2015 affiliation agreement between UT and ProMedica under which ProMedica sent an influx of cash to UT in exchange for moving some teaching functions to ProMedica, such as UT medical graduates performing residency at ProMedica Toledo Hospital.
Some services formerly offered at UTMC also were shifted to ProMedica Toledo Hospital, leaving critics to believe the deal was one-sided and has since created a monopoly for ProMedica.
In August, UTMC lowered its trauma designation from level I to level III.
The meeting Saturday was energetic, with many members voicing their frustration about the hospital’s uncertainty. One attendee said the situation is “scary.”
An impassioned Mr. Finkbeiner responded: “It is scary. You have the right to be scared in the sense that nobody’s communicated to you what they’re doing and that’s got to end.... All they’re doing is running for cover.”
Randy Desposito, the president of American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Local 2415 representing 2,000 UTMC workers, said the hospital is too important to South Toledo to continually have its services reduced. He has been concerned for some time the hospital will become a “band-aid station, or even worse, be closed down.
“If you had an infant in this neighborhood that was having shortness of breath and the parents took the infant to the hospital, it would be a UTMC nurse, it would be a UTMC physician that would save that child’s life,” he said.
Dr. Donna Woodson, a UT professor emerita who previously served as the Lucas County Board of Health president for 14 years, has a deep connection to UTMC. A member of the Medical College of Ohio’s first graduating class, she later became the first woman to serve as president of the Academy of Medicine of Toledo and Lucas County. Dr. Woodson attended the town-hall meeting Saturday because she’s concerned about community members having to travel to other hospitals to get care.
“We can’t have everything,” she said. “But we have to have access to care, and access to include people in the community who can’t easily go very long distances to get that care.”
Saturday’s meeting was the first about UTMC that Tim Ryan and Lisa O’Neill, who who live in South Toledo, attended. Ms. O’Neill said she’s become more and more concerned about services and businesses of all kinds leaving her neighborhood recently.
“We’ve lost a lot,” Ms. O’Neill said. “We lost Southwyck [Shopping Center mall] and they’ve done nothing to bring that in. We’ve lost a lot of businesses and all of a sudden it’s like the South End kind of feels like the red-headed stepchild a little bit. There’s people that live around here that can’t get all the way across town.”
Mr. Ryan added that all South Toledo residents have visited the medical center at some point, and losing it would be losing a part of the community.
“We’ve all been there for something,” he said of the hospital. “She [Ms. O’Neill] was there last week, I was there for a broken collarbone and other things. My wife has been there. We’ve all used it and benefited from it being here. And if it’s not there, you lose something.”
First Published February 8, 2020, 9:10 p.m.
