The city of San Francisco’s Health Commission will cut $28.1 million in health care costs to help the city bridge a $251 million budget gap for the 2008-09 fiscal year. About half of those cuts that will take place April 15 include eliminating Health at Home, a program in which public health nurses visit chronically ill, homebound people; closing Buster’s Place, a 24-hour drop-in center for homeless people who are looking for shelter or a hot shower; closing a workers’ compensation clinic at San Francisco General Hospital; reducing mental health services; and reducing hours for the hospital’s oral surgery clinic and operating rooms.

Additional cuts approved by the commission for the next fiscal year include closing a wing at Laguna Honda Hospital, limiting services for sex workers and reducing funding for residential treatment for gunshot victims. These cuts will need approval from the Board of Supervisors.
The mayor’s office said the budget shortfall stems from the addition of hundreds of new positions to the city payroll, big raises negotiated by labor groups, and several new spending requirements approved by voters.
Hundreds of people packed the commission’s chambers to protest the cuts. Nurses rallying outside the commission meeting said the mayor was balancing his budget at the expense of poor people. Stefan Lynch, a nurse still wearing his stethoscope around his neck, waved a sign reading, “Stop the cuts to public health nurses!”
“A budget is a moral document,” Lynch said. “I think the moral thing to do is preserve services for the most vulnerable.”

Source: San Francisco Chronicle