Stones & Bones / health care / volume 12 number 8, September 2010

DOSE OF REALITY
Alaska Regional Hospital: Its Interesting History
August 8, 2010, by Neil Davis

Alaska Regional Hospital in Anchorage has a complex history, bits and pieces of which appear here and there in the literature. In this article I attempt to assemble that available information into a cohesive story.

The for-profit hospital now known as Alaska Regional Hospital (or HCA/Columbia Alaska Regional Hospital) started out in 1963 as the nonprofit Anchorage Presbyterian Community Hospital, then located on Eighth Avenue and L Street. (1)

A history of the involvement of the Presbyterian Church in Alaska health care (2) states:

The ultra-modern $800,000 Presbyterian Community Hospital, located on Eighth Avenue and L Street in Anchorage, was officially dedicated on June 10, 1963, and received its first patient at noon on June 18, according to a report written by the Rev. Hal N. Banks.

The 45-bed hospital was a non-profit institution operated by Presbyterian Ministries, Inc., Synod of Washington-Alaska, United Presbyterian Church in the USA. The hospital was designed to provide full emergency, medical, surgical and obstetrical care for patients of every race, color, and creed–perhaps perceived as of more significance because of its location in a town served by a Native service hospital and a hospital operated by the Sisters of Providence.

….The hospital itself was a solid building—a fact proven by the Good Friday Earthquake of 1964. Following the quake, structural engineer Richard Hadley inspected the facility and declared that it was unbelievable that the four-story concrete building was able to withstand the quake, even though it was located within 250 feet of the major fault. [not true, but it was near major slide fissures]

The severe shock disrupted the building’s utilities but actual damage was confined to breakage of hospital supplies and other things that had fallen from the shelves.

….At the 1964 meeting of Presbytery, the Rev. William Pritchard addressed the relationship between the Presbytery and the Anchorage Community Hospital, including a brief picture of the hospital’s financial responsibilities. Details were not included in the minutes but sketchy records in the archives would indicate that there was some financial strain on the new institution.

Also at this meeting it was reported that the Board of National Missions had made emergency funds available for disaster relief in the Anchorage earth-quake [sic] area.

The hospital building today is used as a municipal health center and offices. The spirit of the original Presbyterian Community Hospital has gone through several reincarnations—and could, in some ways, be considered the roots from which sprang the present Alaska Regional Hospital at DeBarr and Airport Heights roads.

That last sentence points to an issue left out of the Alaska Regional Hospital’s history as described in the organization’s current website: the fact that the present hospital was actually built and owned by Teamsters Union Local 959 in 1976. It is easily understandable why the hospital’s website does not dwell on this chapter of its history that took place during pipeline construction days.

The era of construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, 1973 to 1977, was a wild time in Alaska, and during that period the Alaska portion of the Teamsters Union, Local 959 with its 23,000 members, was making money hand over fist, taking into its pension trust funds $1 million each week. Head of Local 959 was the notorious Jesse L. Carr who in the late 1960s was charged with extortion, embezzlement, and making false claims to secure a government loan. A US District Court judge dismissed four of the counts, and prosecutors dropped two counts because their key witness became too ill to testify. (3)

Under Jesse Carr’s leadership, the Teamsters Union chose to build an empire by investing in real estate and construction.(4) That effort led to the organization of a nonprofit subsidiary called Teamsters Local 959 Building Corporation. It built a 200-bed hospital (named the Alaska Hospital) in 1976 at a cost of $23 million. At the hospital’s DeBarr and Airport Heights roads location it also built an adjoining 84,000-square-foot professional building costing $8 million that contained Teamster headquarters, a Teamster-owned dental clinic and pharmacy, plus other offices. Collectively, the facilities were called the Alaska Hospital and Medical Center and were operated by the Alaska Teamster Employer Medical Service Corporation, another Teamster subsidiary (Anchorage Daily News).(5) The stated intent was to reduce the cost of medical care for members of the Teamster Union, and perhaps also the idea was to do well by doing good.

The Teamsters had by then acquired the Presbyterian Community Hospital, located on Eighth Avenue and L Street. The above-cited article in the Anchorage Daily News contained the passage:

Union officials will not discuss their plans for disposing of the $1.5 million Community Hospital at 15th [8th, not 15th] and L streets in downtown Anchorage…. Likewise, the union has retreated from open discussion of its announced plans to build a hospital in Fairbanks.

Last May the union confirmed its intentions to build a $12 million facility in Fairbanks, a 100-bed project under consideration for over a year. Local 959 decided to go it alone after negotiations with Fairbanks Memorial Hospital broke down. Those talks involved a Teamster offer to provide cash for expanding the city’s existing $8.6 million hospital in return for union representation on the board of directors to “protect” its investment.

During the course of the conversation with directors of the non-profit Fairbanks Community Hospital Foundation, Carr said he was willing to consider two options—Teamster participation in expansion, providing Local 959 were given control of the governing bodies of both the hospital and the hospital foundation, or, outright purchase of the hospital with expansion as needed.

Carr’s offer met with immediate opposition, primarily from the Fairbanks medical community and individuals involved in the original community fund raising activities for their facility.

Fairbanksans had good reason to reject the Teamsters’ intended takeover of their hospital. No doubt foremost in their minds was awareness of the recent (July 1976) disappearance from the local pipeline warehouse of two of the four top local union officials whose bullet-riddled bodies were later found in the woods near Fairbanks. This incident was highly suggestive of Teamster ties to organized crime, and indeed one of the murdered men was a convicted felon thought to be a leader of drug and fencing operations at the Fairbanks pipeline terminal.(6) (This was one year after the similar mysterious disappearance of Teamster national leader Jimmy Hoffa whose body never was found.)

The Teamsters did manage to build a recreational center in Fairbanks, but the union’s foray into the hospital business there was over. On October 12, 1976, the Teamsters closed their Anchorage Community Hospital and moved all patients to the new Alaska Hospital Center.(7) The organization continued to operate the hospital at a loss for several years, but in 1980 the US Department of Labor decreed that the union was in violation of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) and ordered Teamsters Local 959 to divest itself of the hospital and other investments. The union sold its recreational centers in Anchorage and Fairbanks to a group of private investors, and the Alaska Hospital and Medical Center to Louisville-based Humana, Inc., one of the largest for-profit hospital chains in the country.(8)

Thus in early 1982 what originally was the nonprofit Presbyterian Community Hospital that later became the Teamster-owned Alaska Hospital now became the Humana Hospital Anchorage, and for the first time was operating as part of a for-profit hospital chain. Then in early 1993 Humana, Inc. became Galen Health Care, Inc. and the hospital received its present name: Alaska Regional Hospital. This name would more or less stick right up to the present, but the ownership of the hospital would continue to evolve, and sometimes the owners’ names would be attached or closely associated with the hospital’s name. Thus in 1993 the owner of the hospital was a subsidiary of Galen Health Care, Inc. called Galen Hospital Alaska, Inc. dba (doing business as) Alaska Regional Hospital.(9, 10)

Shortly thereafter, in 1994, Columbia Hospital Corporation bought out Galen Health Care, Inc., and then Galen Hospital Alaska, Inc. listed itself doing business as Columbia Alaska Regional Hospital.(11) That same year Columbia merged with HCA Inc. (formerly Health Care America, Inc.) so the hospital name soon received another minor change, becoming Columbia/HCA Alaska Regional Hospital. However, various sources and documents continue to use the name Columbia Alaska Regional Hospital, and the public, as well as the hospital itself, generally uses the simpler name Alaska Regional Hospital, which does not reflect the ownership. Now, in mid-2010, that ownership is private, but Columbia/HCA is preparing an initial public offering intended to take this major corporation public.

Summarized briefly, the history of Alaska Regional Hospital is one of change from an independent nonprofit institution intended primarily to help serve the health needs of the Anchorage area into one that today is part of a giant for-profit enterprise, which, as such, has the primary purpose of providing income to shareholders. An interesting episode along the way was the involvement of Teamsters Local 959 which actually built the current hospital structure. Its leader, Jesse L. Carr, also tried to take over the Fairbanks Community Hospital back in 1976, and it is to the credit of the Fairbanks Community Hospital Foundation and the members of the Fairbanks community that they did not let this happen.

Notes:

1. http://www.alaskaregional.com/CustomPage.asp?guidCustomContentID=09548006-BC70-4124-8FE9-18E6B507E40B

2. http://www.yukonpresbytery.com/History/SpecialMinistries/HealthCare.htm.

3. Tower, Elizabeth (1999) Anchorage, from its humble origins as a railroad construction camp (Seattle: Epicenter Press) 222 pp.

4. Ibid

5. Anchorage Daily News, September 16, 1976, p. 1.

6. Cole, Dermot (1997) Amazing Pipeline Stories, how building the Trans-Alaska Pipeline transformed life in America’s last frontier (Seattle: Epicenter Press)

7. Anchorage Daily News, October 13, 1976, page 2

8. Anchorage Daily News, January 14, 1982, page C1

9. http://www.hcahealthcare.com/CPM/hca-our%20history.pdf

10. That same year Columbia acquired Medical Care America and other healthcare businesses, quickly building a comprehensive healthcare network. At its peak, the $20 billion company had approximately 285,000 employees, more than 350 hospitals, 145 outpatient surgery centers, 550 home care agencies and several other ancillary businesses.

11. http://google.brand.edgar-online.com/EFX_dll/EDGARpro.dll?FetchFilingHtmlSection1?SectionID=159844-556096-618750&SessionID=zgW7Hjuc9vn9i77

Neil Davis is a retired geophysicist and author of several fiction and nonfiction books. His most recent book is Mired in the Health Care Morass. More on health care issues can be found at his blog, http://healthcaremorass.blogspot.com. Neil can be contacted at neildavs@mosquitonet.com.

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