OU goes to Riverview Hospital

[cougarnurse]

Interesting move: OU goes to Riverview Hospital | The Detroit News | detnews.com

St. John Health System's now-shuttered Riverview Hospital on Detroit's east side will see new life in January when Oakland University moves its one-year accelerated nursing program to the hospital's second floor, allowing it to double the number of nurses it trains each year.

The Oakland University Board of Trustees voted Thursday to move the nursing program from St. John's Conner Creek Village facility on East Outer Drive to Riverview's defunct intensive care unit more than a year after Riverview's June 2007 closing.

St. John officials say they hope to establish Riverview as an education center for other health-care professionals, such as patient care technicians and certified nurse assistants. Rochester-based Oakland University also is considering opening a faculty-run medical clinic on the Riverview campus, where patients could receive discount care from nurse practitioners.

"What we're hoping to do is have a presence in the city of Detroit," said Linda Adams Thompson, dean of the nursing school at Oakland University. "We hope to develop the work force and help them transition from manufacturing to the health care sector."

Oakland University's accelerated nursing program caters to students who already have a college degree and have completed basic science requirements. The program admits 50 students a year. Once in the new site, Oakland hopes to increase the class size to 100 and expand the program to admit 150 students a year.

St. John, which is based in Warren, is giving Oakland University $5 million in grants to cover the leasing costs at Riverview for the next five years. The seven-hospital system also plans to contribute teaching staff to the program.

University officials say the expanded program will help train more nurses at time when the health care industry is grappling with a nationwide shortage of nurses. That shortage is expected to worsen as the population ages and older nurses retire. One study estimated that Michigan could see a shortage of up to 18,000 nurses by 2015.

The shortage is made more acute because a lack of teachers keeps nursing schools from expanding their classes, causing long waiting lists for students to get in, health care experts say.

The expansion also comes at a crucial time for Oakland University, which is establishing a new medical school with Beaumont Hospitals in Oakland County and increasing its educational reach into health care.

The closing of St. John's hospital last year drew harsh criticism from community leaders, who accused the health system of abandoning Detroit, even after St. John received state approval to build a new hospital in Novi on the promise that it would continue its mission in the city. St. John said that Riverview was bleeding money -- losing about $23 million a year -- and pointed to its large campus on Mack and Moross as evidence of its commitment to Detroit.

Earlier this year, St. John converted Riverview's emergency department to an urgent care center, which is operated through an independent contractor. A number of doctors still have their offices on the hospital campus, as well.

Despite St. John's efforts to keep some medical resources at Riverview, closing the hospital has created a vacuum of medical services in the community that will be difficult to fill, even with the establishment of a university-run medical clinic, said Sister Mary Ellen Howard, executive director of the Cabrini Clinic, a free clinic located just a few miles away.

"When Detroit Riverview was open, the population on the east side looked to that hospital as a focus of medical care for the neighborhood, whether it was primary care, emergency care or acute care," Howard said. "The closure of that hospital has had a big impact on the ability of east-siders to access care."

The nursing program could provide other benefits to the community, such as training nurses who would be more likely to stay in the city, and providing options to residents looking for a career change after losing their jobs.

St. John officials acknowledged that the nursing program wouldn't directly address the lack of primary care on the east side, and noted that St. John is working with the federally-run health centers to recruit more primary care doctors to the area.

Rather, the nursing program is designed to give people in the area more career options and expand the pipeline of new nurses for St. John, where hiring nurses is a challenge, said Mary Naber, St. John's senior vice president. "It's a way to bridge the gap on our labor needs and an economy that needs to educate its people."