UNMH Priorities Disputed.(Final)

Byline: Jackie Jadrnak Journal Staff Writer

Critics Feel Tax-Hike Spending Shorts Needy

More surgeons. Better pay for nurses. Expanded trauma care.

University of New Mexico Hospital is pointing to all this and more in a marketing campaign to tell taxpayers how it is spending their money.

But critics say the state's largest public hospital is spending too much on bricks and mortar and not enough to provide health care for the poor.

One example they cite is a case in which surgeons cut a hole in a man's head to relieve swelling after an accident. But they say the hospital's finance office refused to schedule a follow-up procedure to replace the piece of skull because it was no longer an emergency.

The man, they said, wore a baseball cap to protect his brain until the hospital finally agreed to do the procedure.

Part of the criticism stems from the fact that UNMH has more resources than it used to.

Bernalillo County voters approved a tax hike for the hospital two years ago, boosting its property tax allotment from $32.3 million to $57 million a year.

More of the tax increase should be spent on repairing the safety net for the poor, said members of the Community Coalition for Healthcare Access, which was formed partly to demand accountability on how UNMH is spending taxpayer dollars.

"They (UNM Hospital) are the public…