At tonight's Richmond City Council meeting Registered Nurses and community residents are calling on the Council to take action immediately to allocate Chevron funds to restore and maintain Doctors Medical Center as a full service acute care hospital.

“The majority of patients at DMC are from Richmond, they are people of color, they are seniors.  The disparity in health between West county residents and Contra Costa County is already great, and without DMC as a full service hospital, we have essentially a system of Medical Apartheid in Contra Costa," said Carol Sims, RN. "That's why leaders must act  so West county residents have DMC as a full service acute care hospital,” said Sims who has 53 years of service at DMC. 

"West County residents health is compromised daily due to Chevron's normal business practices. They make billions and can well afford to support the full service acute care hospital that this community's health depends on," said Seung Choo, an RN in the ICU at DMC. "Chevron must fund DMC because our community, my community deserves the same level of hospital service as the rest of the county." 

In July the Richmond City Council approved of Chevron's expansion plans which will allow the refinery to process crude oil blends and gas oils with higher sulfur content. The EIR for the project, acknowledges it will cause increases in pollution harmful to people’s health, especially chemicals that cause cancer. 

After the Chevron refinery's oil explosion and contaminant release in 2012, thousands of West County residents sought emergency care at Doctor's Medical Center. According to a report issued in June by Contra Costa Health Services Emergency Services, on the impact of closing DMC, " Doctors San Pablo exhibited a high level of preparedness to receive mass numbers of patients in the 2012 Chevron Refinery Fire Incident. If the facility closes there is reduced capability to manage a similar event at any scale." 

The report also notes that a large percentage of West County residents are below the Federal Poverty line and because of this are "more at risk than others for increased mortality and morbidity during disaster…the groups most likely to be affected are the elderly, children, diabetics and individuals with respiratory diseases and special needs."

DMC stopped receiving ambulances at the emergency department on August 7 and is currently operating as an acute care hospital with reduced patient capacity and a stand-by emergency room that doesn't provide 24 hour emergency surgical services.

Without DMC, West Contra Costa County, one of the most illness-prone regions in Northern California doesn’t have the emergency capacity for its current population with an ongoing shortage of ER and critical care beds. Prior to its reduction in services, DMC provided 79 percent of the hospital beds and 60 percent of the emergency care in the region, treating some 40,000 patients a year.  Since the diversion of ambulances began this summer area hospitals have experienced an explosion in ambulance traffic and delays. Officials from Kaiser Richmond, which has received two-thirds of the diverted ambulance traffic, expressed concern in August that the increase in traffic is impacting the quality of care they can provide patients who arrive at their ER.