St. Croix community members met with Gov. Juan F. Luis Hospital leadership for the second time in as many months Thursday night to have a frank and, at times, emotional discussion about the hospital’s ability to meet the island’s health care needs.
The meetings followed protests of the territory’s two hospitals in July on both St. Croix and St. Thomas, during which a small but passionate group of protesters dressed down public officials and executives at JFL and the Schneider Regional Medical Center on St. Thomas for deficiencies that have forced many Virgin Islanders to seek care elsewhere.
Many of those same people attended Thursday night’s meeting, but the tenor was different.
Luis Hospital Chief Executive Darlene Baptiste, who assumed the position nearly six months ago, explained that the cyberattack “really took us for a little whirlwind” before walking attendees through the hospital’s finances and efforts to attract and retain staff. A recent move by the Virgin Islands government to repurpose Jeffrey Epstein-related settlement funds gave both hospitals a $6.5 million life raft to pay years of arrears, and lawmakers also freed up $3.5 million for each from the territory’s line of credit.
“Our arrears at that time was totaling $19.1 million,” Baptiste said. “So [6.5] — while we’re grateful for that infusion … that was still a small indication of … what we need to address.”
One attendee, Richard Bachoo, asked Baptiste about Gov. Albert Bryan Jr.’s reported skepticism over the projected costs of providing uncompensated care.
“The number that I saw was $47-54 million, and the governor — three times — said it’s ‘BS,’” he said. “I think that’s important for us to understand, because as I did the math for your budget coming over here, that’s the number that throws you over the edge. So is the governor wrong? Is the governor right?”
Baptiste said uncompensated care includes both people who are underinsured and people who have no insurance whatsoever. Either way, those people get treated.
“So the Governor’s position of how he’s describing it? It’s the Governor’s statement,” she said. “But our position still feels the same. That gap in our budget can be upwards of 52 [million] — we’ve quantified that over the last five, five to six years. We’ve quantified it.”
The discourse eventually brought tears to the eyes of more than one person in the room as some attendees shared their own harrowing experiences at JFL. One woman told the story of how she waited in the hospital for two weeks before being airlifted to the continental United States — where she faced many more difficulties — and returned home only to have to buy her own wheelchairs. Baptiste appeared visibly shaken.
“So I am — I feel that we have not been …” she started before taking a moment to collect herself. Attendees offered words of encouragement, and she acknowledged that “it’s been a hard six months.” Baptiste said patients aren’t being sent away because that’s what the hospital wants to do. “We’re sending you away because we have to.
“It’s economics,” she said. “If we’re sitting on literally millions of dollars from our community not paying for their services — even if it’s five, 10, 20 dollars — we’ll take it, at this juncture. We’ll take anything.”
Moments later, attendee Norma Roebuck said she could tell Baptiste was sincere before asking if she’d had a “real sit-down” with Bryan about the state of the hospital.
“This can’t work — we need to do something today,” she said. “We need to get our hospital up and running and ready and built. Nobody can be going away anymore. We’re not supposed to be leaving this territory to go for help.”
