University Hospitals is moving its inpatient, surgical and emergency services out of UH Bedford, shown here, and UH Richmond medical centers, beginning in August.
CLEVELAND, Ohio — University Hospitals will end inpatient care, surgeries and emergency services at UH Bedford and UH Richmond medical centers, effective Aug. 12, UH announced Thursday.
Those services will be transferred to UH Ahuja, Geauga, Lake West, TriPoint, Beachwood, Geneva and Conneaut medical centers, UH said. The health system pointed to a lack healthcare workers for the decisions.
About 600 caregivers — 337 at UH Richmond and 280 at UH Bedford — will be affected. They will be offered jobs at other UH facilities and layoffs are not planned, UH said.
“Our hospitals in Bedford and Richmond Heights are among the smallest and least utilized within UH. Consolidating services to nearby locations enables us to staff more efficiently during this critical time,” said Dr. Paul Hinchey, UH interim chief operating officer and president, UH Community Delivery Network.
Physician services will continue at the Bedford and Richmond facilities, and the behavioral health unit at UH Richmond will stay open. However, Bedford and Richmond will no longer be classified as hospitals, Hinchey said.
In place of the services that are leaving, UH plans to start new wellness programs and services focusing on wellness and safety, maternal and child health, food security, and workforce development. The emphasis will be on early detection to treat people before they get sick, he said.
The wellness programs will be housed in adjacent medical office buildings, not the former hospitals. Hinchey said he didn’t know how much of the former hospitals will be vacant.
UH CEO Dr. Cliff Megerian announced the changes to UH employees in a video posted online. In the video he said, “We arrived at the decision to discontinue inpatient care at UH Bedford and Richmond medical centers after a lot of careful thought. We appreciate what a hospital and the long legacy of care delivered at these facilities means to the community.
“I’m sure, however, that these decisions are the right ones for all of our patients, and that our patients in Bedford and Richmond Heights will be well-served by the investments we will be making in wellness programs and services designed specifically for them,” Megerian continued.
Bedford, Richmond reduced to 14 beds
Even though COVID-19 patients are no longer swamping hospitals, worsening employee shortages continue across the system, making it difficult to bring UH Bedford and UH Richmond up to full staffing strength, Hinchey said.
Systemwide, UH is short about 3,000 employees, and 900 of those unfilled jobs are for nurses. Hinchey wasn’t able to say how many employees should be at Bedford and Richmond if all vacant jobs there were filled.
Since the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, UH Bedford and UH Richmond have been reduced to 14 beds at each hospital, so that UH could redeploy resources and workers to larger UH facilities, Hinchey said.
Prior to the bed reduction, Bedford Medical Center had 77 beds, and Richmond had 86, according to the American Hospital Directory. That made them smaller than UH Ahuja with 145 beds and UH Geauga with 133.
Will UH patients wait longer for surgery?
Closing the operating rooms at UH Bedford and UH Richmond should not cause longer wait times for surgical procedures, Hinchey said. The larger surgical departments at other UH hospitals will be able to handle extra cases.
Emergency cases that would have been handled at Bedford and Richmond will be routed to nearby facilities at UH Ahuja in Beachwood and UH Lake West in Willoughby.
Bedford is about six miles from UH Ahuja, and Richmond is about six miles from UH Lake West, he said. Emergency care should not be affected when the emergency departments at Bedford and Richmond close, Hinchey said.
A loss for inner-ring suburbs?
With this move, two inner-ring suburbs with large African-American populations — Bedford and Richmond Heights — are losing full-service hospitals with deep community roots.
UH Bedford Medical Center opened in 1928 as Bedford Municipal Hospital. In 1979 the name was changed to the Community Hospital of Bedford, which UH purchased in 1993. UH Richmond Medical Center, in Richmond Heights, has served patients since 1961.
Most of the UH facilities that the hospital system expects to take on Bedford and Richmond patients are in Lake, Geauga and Ashtabula counties.
The mayors of Bedford and Richmond Heights did not immediately comment.
Hinchey doesn’t see the end of inpatient care at UH Bedford and UH Richmond as a loss. UH is committed to redesigning care and reinvesting in those cities, he said.
“We’re actually going to invest more and work with those communities around what they need going forward,” Hinchey said.
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