The commission on the future of Hospital Care in Connecticut, created by the state legislature last year, is taking a look at the financial condition of the state's hospitals, including John Dempsey Hospital, part of the University of Connecticut Health Center where hundreds of AFT members work.

AFT's University Health Professionals president Jean Morningstar, a commission appointee, has been battling to save funding for the hospital, which is crucial to the training of the health professionals in UConn's graduate medical education programs. The hospital, says Morningstar, "trains most of the doctors and dentists who stay in this area." She emphasizes that the operations, which are currently underfunded "to the tune of $14 million," should be supported like any other state agency. It's the state's only primary care public hospital.

While the commission is looking at hospital care throughout the state, it will also be zeroing in on the University of Connecticut Health Center and its funding. Morningstar says the union is trying to influence its look at the quality of that care, including such issues as nurse-to-patient ratios and staffing. Both Morningstar and another appointee have been given the mandate "to coordinate from our point of view why there is a nursing shortage" and to find people to testify before the commission; that meeting is set for March 12, 2001, in Hartford.

Morningstar has been fighting hard "to make sure Dempsey [Hospital] is on the radar screen." So far, she says, the union has been able "to [focus] the legislature's eyes on how important it is to have the only public hospital attached to a university teaching medical students." She says the fight is still on to save this public hospital from privatization.