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E-mailBeacon of shame
Joseph Sabino Mistick is a lawyer, law professor and political analyst. He lives in Squirrel Hill. He can be reached by e-mail.
UPMC, internationally renowned as a center for organ transplants, is involved in some hinky business just up the river from its swanky headquarters atop what once was known as the USX Tower.
The health care giant is removing the beating heart of the Borough of Braddock and trying to transplant it into another community that already has a healthy heart.
By closing Braddock Hospital, UPMC is pulling the plug on a town that is in critical condition. Once the stomping grounds of young George Washington and later the site of Andrew Carnegie's first steel mill and first library, Braddock was home to more than 20,000 residents during the booming 1950s.
When postwar workers could finally afford a car to take them away from the smoke at the end of their shifts and throughout the long slide of big steel, Braddock's population slipped to less than 3,000 residents -- mostly minority, mostly poor, mostly struggling for a better life.
After letting the patient census dwindle, the imperial voices at UPMC claim that Braddock Hospital no longer attracts enough patients to justify keeping it open. UPMC could have fought to strengthen Braddock Hospital, using its vaunted management skills to attract more patients or carve out a specialty that would have sustained the hospital and the town.
But instead of fighting for the life of Braddock Hospital, UPMC chose civic euthanasia, putting the hospital on a morphine drip, shutting down this old town's last defense, knowing that its hastened passing would clear the way for other corporate endeavors.
UPMC reported $65 million in profits in just this last quarter and has an investment portfolio worth $3 billion. UPMC operates in Sicily, Ireland, Qatar and the United Kingdom and is planning a facility in Cyprus.
Still, its autocratic managers claim they cannot find the money to keep Braddock Hospital open here at home, where our community allows them to operate without paying real estate taxes on their so-called nonprofit facilities.
And for what noble cause has UPMC abandoned Braddock and its people? It plans to build a new hospital in Monroeville just two miles down the road from a perfectly fine hospital that is operated by West Penn Allegheny, the only competitor that UPMC has in our region.
Maybe UPMC's closing of Braddock Hospital is the result of corporate greed, executive suite egos run amok or an unholy compulsion to crush the opposition -- patients and communities be damned.
So much for health care cost containment.
According to its Web site, "UPMC is committed to giving back to and reinvesting in the community." And UPMC has committed $10 million per year for 10 years for the Pittsburgh Promise, a college tuition guarantee for public high school students. But that must not come at the cost of its primary charitable mission, which is to provide health care throughout our community.
You can see the very top of what now is UPMC's headquarters skyscraper poking over the distant horizon from the hilltops surrounding Braddock and the other proud but tired towns that run along the Turtle Creek Valley. On a clear night, there is a soft glow from the UPMC sign that crowns the health conglomerate's offices.
To some, that sign might still be seen as a positive symbol of our economic transition from heavy industry to health care. But to the people of Braddock, that UPMC sign will forever be a beacon of shame.
