Ascension Wisconsin hospital cuts; Milwaukee leaders seek answers
MILWAUKEE - Hospital cuts mean thousands of people in Milwaukee will need to travel farther for emergency cardiac care.
This is all about the place you might go if you ever have a heart attack – it's called a cath lab. It is where doctors can go in and clear a blockage.
"St. Joseph saved both my parents' lives. My dad had a heart blockage and I got him to the hospital and then my mom suffered a heart attack and my brother got here to the hospital," said Milwaukee Alderwoman Larresa Taylor, "Now that does bring about a fear, 'cause now where do I take them?
That is the concern Milwaukee's Public Safety and Health Committee addressed on Thursday, Dec. 5 – with the looming closure of St. Joseph's cath lab.
"Time is tissue when it comes to heart attacks and when it comes to cardiac events," said David Hensley, Milwaukee Fire Department Assistant Chief of EMS. "Every 30 minutes delay in cath lab access, a 7.5% increase in mortality is what happens."
"It really poses a significant risk," said Joshua Parish, MFD Assistant Chief. "When we learned of this news, it was incredibly disturbing to us. The reality is we often serve as that last line of hope and bring services to many, many patients who really are literally at death’s door. And in some of these cases brought back from death’s door."
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The Milwaukee Fire Department said the closure will mean 100,000 Milwaukeeans will not be within 15 minutes of a cath lab. Department officials said right now, 95% of people in the city are within a 15-minute range. But with the St. Joseph's cath lab cut, the department estimates that number will drop to about 78%. Instead, ambulances plan to rush heart attack patients to hospitals at least five miles away – to Froedtert, Columbia St. Mary's or Aurora Grafton.
FOX6 News questioned the top executive of Ascension Wisconsin, Daniel Jackson.
"What about the worries that people are not going to get the care they need; that every second counts when you’re having a heart attack. They’re going to have to drive 15-20 minutes out of the way?" asked FOX6's Jason Calvi.
"People don’t drive when they’re having a heart attack," Jackson replied.
"They are being transported," Calvi responded. "What would you say to those worries that 15 minutes is going to make the difference?"
Jackson walked away.
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Members of the Milwaukee Common Council did get some answers in a committee meeting on Thursday.
"From the time our fire department or our private EMT folk reach a patient in any of the districts with a cardiac emergency, to the time that I can open an artery, we’d like that to be less than 90 minutes," said Erik Stilp, Ascension cardiologist at Columbia St. Mary's.
Ascension Wisconsin
Ascension Wisconsin said the closure was a tough decision.
"As the landscape has changed, the ability or the desire to offer all services, at every hospital, is just not practical and the scarcity of resources, it is not possible," Jackson said. "There’s a shortage of nurses. There’s a shortage of physicians. There’s a shortage of pipeline of a number of health care workers…For each of those standalone cath labs, you also have equipment, you have to have nurses, you have to have doctors, you have to have other providers, so in this time of scarcity of resources, there’s also a value when you consolidate, that the profiency based on seeing higher volumes, your skill set increases."
Come Dec. 14, there will be no cath lab left on Milwaukee's north side.