Hospital Desert: Part 1

Sutter Health recently announced the consolidation of services from Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley to their Summit campus in Oakland. While this news was upsetting to the surrounding communities, there’s another set of worries among residents of Richmond and West County. The city is now losing its second hospital in less than five years putting many further and further away from an emergency room.

On the first part of this two-part series, reporter Nuria Marquez Martinez goes through the current status of the Alta Bates and how one Richmond resident has been impacted by the lack of an emergency room.