Perspective: 'The insanity . . . has to stop'

In the year since St. Petersburg filed a lawsuit trying to force Bayfront Medical Center to abandon its religious directives, the hospital has done precisely that. In fact, it severed its alliance with the BayCare Health System, which included Catholic hospitals and required the directives, and its board has reinstituted the abortion and medical policy that existed prior to BayCare. It has supplied thousands of pages of documents to the city's attorneys and has allowed five executives to be questioned under oath.

So what possibly is left to litigate? How could the St. Petersburg City Council conceivably allow this case to head to trial?

A new mayor and three new council members take office today, and they will face few issues as important as the viability of Bayfront Medical Center. Bayfront is the community's hospital, once operated by the city and still resting on public land, and it faces extraordinary challenges to continue providing its high quality of care, its emergency and trauma services and its commitment to serve any patient regardless of ability to pay.

One of Bayfront's financial strategies was to align with other non-profit hospitals in the area, but the BayCare relationship also carried a commitment to the Catholic members that was awkward for a hospital sitting on public land. The religious questions were delicate ones, but the former council was so blinded by the issue of abortion services that it precipitously sued.

What the new council faces is a deadline in a lawsuit that has long since outserved any purpose other than to produce billable hours for the Miami attorney, Paul Lipton, representing city government. Bayfront has retained some shared financial services with other BayCare hospitals, as well it should, which has served as a pretext for Lipton to continue a seemingly endless inquest. Not satisfied with the unchallenged depositions of five Bayfront and BayCare executives, the publicly released documents outlining the breakup, the three months of separate functioning of the hospitals and the hospital board's own policy votes to eliminate any religious directives, Lipton just keeps asking for more. Among the records he has requested is the previously existing contract that provides for Bayfront to burn medical waste from St. Anthony's Hospital. Is that religious entanglement?

A pretrial conference is set for Friday, and the trial could begin the following week. This comes almost precisely a year after then-Mayor David Fischer said the city had no interest in further litigation: "We hope that by raising the bar we may be able to solve this thing. We don't want to go into court." A million dollars in legal fees later, the city is headed to court.

Larry Williams, who works in the health care industry, has left the council, having unsuccessfully sought the mayor's office. But in his last meeting as a council member on Thursday, he pleaded with his colleagues: "We're pushing this health care facility beyond the point where it may not be able to be repaired. The insanity, I believe, has got to stop."

He's right, and the new mayor and new council can stop it.

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