The clock is running out on efforts to save Minneapolis’ financially troubled Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC), the state’s busiest Level 1 adult and pediatric trauma center. In response, clergy, community and health care workers have intensified their demands for legislators to pass sustainable funding measures.
Dozens of people from faith communities staged a 24-hour vigil outside HCMC this week to pray for Minnesota’s health care system and to reemphasize the importance of the trauma center to the state and region. At a nearby event, nearly 200 health care workers joined them in calling for legislative action.
Speakers at the vigil included two patients whose lives were saved at the hospital, one after sustaining a spinal cord and traumatic brain injury and one after going into end-stage kidney failure.
“Our government officials must act now,” said B. Charvez Russell, senior pastor at Greater Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in South Minneapolis. “Because the real question is not whether we can afford to keep Hennepin County Medical Center open. It’s whether we can survive without it.”
Minister JaNaé Bates Imari, co-executive director of faith-based organizing group ISAIAH, stressed what she called the state’s moral responsibility to ensure sustainable funding for the trauma center, which accepts patients regardless of their insurance status or ability to pay.
“We can most certainly pray and do all that we can, and also pray with our feet, get on our phones, call our legislators to make sure that they do everything they can to fund this hospital and not just fund it piecemeal or just make it to next month, but that they fully fund it in a way that is sustainable over much time for many generations,” Bates Imari said.
Related: The Legislature wants to save HCMC. How will it happen?
Earlier this week, the Senate passed a bill authored by Sen. Melissa Wiklund, DFL-Bloomington that would provide $150 million in one-time funding to HCMC as part of a broader hospital stabilization program. The bill passed on a party-line vote of 34-32, but has yet to receive much traction in the House.
In addition to one-time funding, two tax bills are moving through the Legislature designed to provide a more sustainable source of dollars.
The House bill would repurpose Hennepin County’s 0.15% sales tax originally imposed to pay off bonds for the Minnesota Twins stadium into a 1% tax. The bill’s chief author, Rep. Esther Agbaje, DFL-Minneapolis, said at a House tax committee hearing last month that the proposal would generate around $337 million annually, with a vast majority going toward HCMC.
The Senate bill would propose a more modest increase to the sales tax at 0.25%. Sen. Ann Rest, DFL-New Hope, the chief author of the bill, said the tax would generate around $84 million annually, with about $50 million going to the hospital.
At a rally a short walk from the vigil, almost 200 health care workers and community members joined the “RED ALERT” tour put on by National Nurses United, the country’s largest union for registered nurses. Late last month, the union put the hospital on “Red Alert,” warning that HCMC’s closure would have a “drastic, irreversible impact.”
The event included speakers from the Minnesota Nurses Association, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and Committee of Interns and Residents (CIR/SEIU).
Jess Tangen, a lactation consultant at HCMC and a member of AFSCME Local 2474, spoke in support of the 1% tax proposal, saying the hospital cannot be sustained with quarter- or half-measures.
“Band-aids guarantee massive cuts, cuts we cannot afford, cuts that will fall hardest on our communities and the 7,000 HCMC healthcare workers who have already sacrificed for years,” Tangen said.
Both tax bills are making their way through the Legislature’s hearing and negotiation processes. The session ends May 18.
Hennepin County Commissioner Angela Conley told MinnPost that without swift and sustained funding passed by the Legislature this session, HCMC could begin closing in June.
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