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More than six years after Providence broke ground on a brand new, 12,000-square-foot Acute Inpatient Rehabilitation Addition at Redwood Memorial Hospital in Fortuna, construction has been halted, and plans to complete the facility have been canceled.

The inpatient rehabilitation unit is among a variety of patient services still being offered in the General Hospital campus.

Meanwhile, Providence employees at St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka say the existing inpatient rehabilitation unit, which is housed inside the old General Hospital campus, just north of the main St. Joseph Hospital facilities on Harrison Avenue in Eureka, may soon be eliminated, too — though they’ve been unable to get confirmation from management. 

Rumors of these developments started spreading on social media about two weeks ago, as registered nurses and other Providence employees reported that jobs and services may soon be eliminated. 

“The CEO [Michael Kelemen] told us they have stopped building at Redwood Memorial and do not anticipate restarting that building,” said one hospital employee who spoke to the Outpost on condition of anonymity for fear of losing her job. (We’ll call her Jennifer.)

The inpatient rehabilitation unit — which is where occupational therapists, physical therapists and other care providers help patients recover from strokes, surgeries, physically debilitating accidents and more — is among a variety of services still being offered in the old General Hospital campus. Jennifer said the unit employs roughly 40 people, including case managers, social workers, speech therapists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, registered nurses, dietitians and more.

But the General Hospital building doesn’t meet the State of California’s current seismic standards. Providence, the not-for-profit Catholic health care system that took over St. Joseph Health in 2016, previously estimated the cost of seismic retrofits at its Humboldt County facilities alone at more than $180 million.

Construction of the new facility in Fortuna proceeded in fits and starts over the least eight years, but Jennifer and other employees reached by the Outpost said costs ballooned during COVID and skyrocketed even higher in recent years.

“So we don’t know much — just that admin went around to a couple huddles and told them they’re abandoning the construction project at Redwood,” said Julia Minton, an organizer and membership representative with the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW).

“From there, people kind of run with that information,” Minton said. “We also heard that Providence is on an extension, [that] they got a variance to continue operating [from inside General Hospital] past the state deadline because it had that plan in place.”

This variance for compliance with state seismic regulations was contingent on active construction of the new facility, so when word came that the project is being abandoned, “that’s where people jumped to the assumption that General Hospital is getting closed now or by end of year,” Minton said.

We sent Providence a list of questions via email, asking specifically whether the local inpatient rehab unit will be closed and, if so, where patients who need those services might be sent, how many employee positions will be eliminated, and when these changes might happen.

In response, an L.A.-area Providence spokesperson named Patricia Aidem sent a statement that didn’t really answer those questions, though she did confirm that the construction at Redwood Memorial will not be completed: 

Providence St. Joseph Hospital, Eureka, like all other hospitals in California, is subject to meeting structural seismic compliance standards by 2025.  We have communicated with caregivers and the community that the General Hospital campus is not seismically compliant, requiring services to be discontinued in those buildings by the end of 2024.  

We are proactively collaborating with the State to keep them informed of progress toward compliance, which included the relocation of the Acute Rehabilitation Unit to Providence Redwood Memorial Hospital in Fortuna.

Due to several external factors, we are unable to move forward with the project at Providence Redwood Memorial Hospital.

We’ve engaged internal stakeholders and community members to identify potential solutions to maintain this critical service in Humboldt County and are currently exploring the options.

We are committed to keeping our caregivers and the community informed as we navigate this process and determine the most effective way to move forward. 

The Outpost called Aidem late last week in hopes of getting more details, but when we asked whether St. Joseph Hospital’s inpatient rehab unit will be closed she said she couldn’t answer that. Why not?

“Because I’m sitting about three or four hundred miles south of there,” she said. “This is what I was advised to share with you.”

On Monday we emailed local Providence spokesperson Christian Hill, hoping he might have more information. He responded via email earlier today, saying simply that the above statement “is our most up to date information.”

Local employees say they’ve also been left in the dark, and they’re not happy about it.

“It is absolutely cruel of the hospital to treat its staff in such a disrespectful way, not letting them know what their future is,” Jennifer said. “They are neither confirming or denying that the unit is closing.”

Minton said she’s been unable to get answers, either. “I have been feeling very much like Donald Rumsfeld,” Minton said, referring to the former Secretary of Defense’s oft-quoted remarks about “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns.”

“It’s really disrespectful,” Minton said. “People are freaked out.”

The rumor mill among local health care workers has been further fed by a leaked July 1 memo from Granada Rehabilitation & Wellness Center in Eureka to its employees. The memo, signed by administrator Alice Brasier, announces a new collaboration with “Providence Hospital” on a “rehabilitation enhancement program called The Step-Down Unit.”

Reached by phone last week, Brasier said she had no comment on the memo or the collaboration with Providence.

Minton said this memo “freaked a lot of people out,” though she suspects that the new step-down unit it references is probably not intended as a replacement for Providence’s existing inpatient services. Nevertheless, she said, the prospect of collaborating with a skilled nursing facility (SNF) has local nurses and providers worried.

“Every physical therapist and occupational therapist I’ve spoken to does not want to see us partnered with a SNF,” Minton said, “mostly because they’re terrible operators. They’re not good institutions, especially the ones we have locally. They’re unabashedly greedy.” (See news reports here, here and here for more info on that.)

We shared a copy of Providence’s PR statement with Jennifer, who took particular notice of the part claiming that administrators have “engaged internal stakeholders and community members.”

“I don’t know who’s a bigger stakeholder than the staff who’ve been on that award-winning unit and the patients we serve,” she said.

Established in 1987, the Acute Inpatient Rehabilitation Program has cared for almost 10,000 patients from across Humboldt County and beyond, according to Providence. The program treats conditions such as major trauma injuries, brain injuries, amputations, neurological disorders, burns, spinal cord injuries and more. In 2020, the program ranked in the top tier nationwide for overall patient satisfaction.

“Its value is priceless for the community,” said Bonnie Hamant, a registered nurse who works at the facility. “By community I mean from Fort Bragg to Hoopa and all areas in between. What we have been able to give to patients is their independence and life back. Nothing is more precious for a patient recovering than to see a positive future, not a nursing home wall.”

Jennifer said she’s heard that Providence may either collaborate with a local skilled nursing facility or rely on regional support by sending patients (and maybe some of their family members) down to Queen of the Valley Medical Center in Napa or the Providence-run hospital in Santa Rosa.

Neither would be an adequate substitute for the services offered locally for the past 37 years, she said.

“I personally am afraid that this is just another notch of what they’ll do,” Jennifer said.

“Providence does this every time,” Minton agreed. She referred specifically to the closure of Providence’s outpatient labs earlier this year and the 2021 closure of the birthing center at Redwood Memorial. In each case, Providence promised that no jobs would be lost. Minton said that while that may technically be true, employees were typically offered lower wages for new positions that required entirely different skillsets. 

“One LDN [labor and delivery nurse] affected by the Redwood closure, they turned around and offered her a nursing assistant position, which was a third of her salary pay cut and a huge demotion,” Minton said.

Minton was hopeful that she’d get more information today. She texted the Outpost this afternoon with this update: “All we got from the hospital today is, continuing construction at redwood is not viable. And that they are committed to keeping services in the area whether operated by St Joes/Redwood or in partnership with another entity. 🤷”

I texted back: “I wonder what they consider ‘the area.’”

“We wonder the same,” Minton replied.