Registered nurses will hold two vigils Thursday to commemorate the life and memory of Jenevieve Dagatan on the first anniversary of her birth, five months after the infant died in April after being discharged following an initial visit to the emergency room at Kaiser Permanente’s Hayward hospital which had several months earlier closed its children’s services unit.

After a morning vigil outside the Kaiser Regional offices at 1950 Franklin St. in Oakland at 8:45 a.m., the RNs, members of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United, will hold a larger, evening vigil at the new Kaiser San Leandro facility.

What:                        Vigils by Kaiser RNs and Family Members
When:                       Thursday, September 18
Morning Vigil:           Kaiser regional office, 1950 Franklin St., Oakland, 8:45 a.m.  
Evening Vigil:           Kaiser San Leandro, 2500 Merced St., San Leandro, 7 p.m. 

Kaiser closed the Hayward pediatrics unit in November, 2013 leaving over 100,000 families in southern and central Alameda County without access to hospitalization for children under 18 in their own communities. The in-patient pediatric facility saw 1,800 families every year who must now travel to Oakland, San Jose or even Roseville on congested freeways for needed care.

While Kaiser has opened a new facility in San Leandro, it does not provide pediatric care for sick children, or have an intermediate step down care unit, an important transitional care unit for patients just out of intensive care.

In early April, Jenevieve Dagatan was checked into the ER at Kaiser Hayward following a seizure and high fever, her family reports. Several hours later, the hospital, which no longer had a pediatric unit to which a child might previously have been admitted for care, sent her home.  

Several days later Jenevieve was back in the hospital, yet Kaiser still had no pediatric unit. After finally being transported to another Kaiser hospital, Jenevieve died on April 12.

“Kaiser failed my family and daughter when they sent us home from the emergency room telling us to just give her Pedialyte and over the counter medicine. It was only when we came back for the second time and demanded treatment that they caught her meningitis. But it was too late and now our little Jenevieve is gone,” Jenevieve’s mother, Andrea Olguin, told CNA.

Kaiser RNs, currently in negotiations with the HMO giant, continue to demand the reopening of pediatric care services for southern Alameda County, and a reversal of other unwarranted patient care cuts by Kaiser.