Fifty Manteca area seniors are traveling Monday to Kaiser’s headquarters in downtown Oakland to protest the corporation’s withdrawal of vital services at Kaiser Hospital in Manteca.

The seniors will bring photographs of their loved ones they say have been harmed by Kaiser’s policy of cutting and denying services in Manteca and rerouting patients to Modesto and beyond.

The protest starts at noon Monday at Kaiser Permanente Corporate Headquarters, 1 Kaiser Plaza, Oakland.

Nurses, who are members of the California Nurses Association and work in the Manteca facility, will accompany the seniors as they travel from Manteca to Oakland, to support their fight for the restoration of services.

The CNA contends Kaiser’s reduction of services at the Manteca facility is part of the HMO’s new model of care, which limits access to hospital and nursing care.

 “My husband has multiple medical issues and with the service cuts we’ve experienced frightening delays in care,” said Jacqueline Rudy, who with her husband, Dennis, has been a Kaiser member for 49 years. “We had to wait at least five hours from the time I took him to Manteca to the time he was finally rerouted and admitted to the hospital in Modesto.  I’m coming to the Oakland headquarters to appeal to Kaiser Executives to reverse the closure of our Hospital.  We’ve paid premiums for more than half of our lives.  We expect to get care.”

Myriam Roiz-Desio and husband, Enrique A. Desio, both Kaiser patients, will also travel to

Oakland to protest service cutbacks at their local hospital, Kaiser Manteca

 The seniors are calling on Kaiser to re-open the hospital’s third floor to admit patients from the Emergency Room or following surgery, and to stop denying admission to patients in need of longer term recovery services in the second floor sub-acute unit. They are also calling on Kaiser to bring back critical diagnostic services cut earlier this year.

 “We need a fully functional hospital in Manteca,” said Ruth Somera, who has been a nurse in the facility for 18 years, the last 10 years while under Kaiser management. “These are basic services that any well-run hospital should have. Our patients’ care is being delayed and disrupted.”