🤍 We are a coalition trying to preserve evidence-based + inclusive health care upon merger of Ellis Medicine & St. Peter’s Health Partners / Trinity Health.
Have you or your family visited Ellis Hospital within the last year? Please take our confidential survey.
When hospitals merge, our services are threatened.
Ellis Medicine must protect patients’ rights & resist religious restrictions on the care our families need.
Ellis Medicine (which includes Ellis Hospital, Bellevue Woman’s Center, the McClellan Street Health Center and the Medical Center of Clifton Park) is planning a merger with St. Peter’s Health Partners, which is part of the giant Trinity Catholic health system. Already, St. Peter’s/Trinity is managing Ellis Hospital and has taken over Ellis physician practices.
Why is this concerning? St. Peter’s and Trinity operate under Catholic health restrictions that prohibit the delivery of key reproductive health services, gender-affirming care and certain end-of-life treatment options and can delay or deny care for pregnancy emergencies, such as miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies.
Which Ellis Medicine services are threatened by the planned merger with St. Peter’s/Trinity?
Reproductive care, including contraception, abortion, tubal ligations, vasectomies and infertility services.
LGBTQ+-inclusive care, including gender affirming treatments and surgeries.
Patient’s rights to end-of-life self-determination, such as choosing death with dignity.
-
Ellis and St. Peter’s announced a “pause” on the planned merger after numerous protests by people in the community, including members of our Schenectady Coalition for Healthcare Access. But then they quietly negotiated a management services agreement by which Ellis is now paying St. Peter’s to manage Ellis Medicine. Moreover, St. Peter's began to employ Ellis physicians. The NYS Department of Health approved the management services agreement over our written letters of protests, through a behind-the-scenes process that included no public hearings. The physician practice takeovers did not require any state approval.
-
When St. Peter’s Health Partners took over Samaritan Hospital in Troy several years ago, a creative solution was found to save access to post-partum tubal ligations and contraceptive counseling. (Tubal ligation, commonly called “having your tubes tied,” is a common service for women who have just delivered a child and do not want future pregnancies). A separate non-religious “hospital-within-a-hospital” was created – the Burdett Care Center, on the second floor of Samaritan Hospital. The rest of Samaritan Hospital came under Catholic restrictions. But, within a few years, the Burdett Care Center was closed as an independent hospital and absorbed into Samaritan Hospital. Access to post-partum tubal ligations was lost.
-
1) Take our Survey
2) Share our survey
3) Volunteer to table & collect survey response