City Council Looking Into Medical Center

News On 6

TULSA, OK -- Tulsa's city council wants more pressure put on state legislators to keep a dying hospital open.

OSU Medical Center in Downtown Tulsa is set to begin closing next month. The medical residents who staff the hospital would move to Saint Francis.

"If we don't have doctors to take care of patients, we're forced to close. That's, I don't want to say the bottom line, but that's the facts of life," said Earl Denning, President and CEO OSUMC.

"The state legislature has insufficiently funded indigent care in Northeastern Oklahoma forever, since statehood. At the same time, the state legislature is spending millions of dollars to fund a hospital in Oklahoma City.  That is the problem," said Rick Westcott of the Tulsa City Council.

The city is debating creating a public trust to own the hospital, and make it non-profit. That would take millions of new money from the state budget.