PROVIDENCE –– The doctors who run clinics for the poor at Rhode Island Hospital yesterday shot back at comments critical of the hospital that were made at the General Assembly on Monday.

Dr. John R. Murphy and Dr. Patricia Flanagan held a news conference before dozens of applauding doctors and nurses to rebut a comment asserting that Rhode Island Hospital failed to provide an adequate clinic system to serve the poor. The comment came during a discussion of plans by the hospital’s parent company, Lifespan, to merge with another hospital group, Care New England.

“We do a tremendous amount in this capacity,” said Murphy, the hospital’s vice president of medical affairs and chief medical officer, mentioning the 36,000 visits each year to the medical primary care clinic, the 11,000 visits to the medical specialty clinics and 17,000 to the surgical specialty clinics. Most of the patients are uninsured or on public assistance.

“We just want to make sure any misperception is righted. The people here really care about this population,” Murphy said. “They work with a socially and financially challenged group and they put their hearts into it.”

“We have a strong commitment to primary care,” said Flanagan, medical director for the pediatric clinics. “I need a place like Rhode Island Hospital and Hasbro Children’s Hospital to do the work I do.”

Held in the lobby of Hasbro Children’s Hospital, the children’s unit of Rhode Island Hospital, the event revealed the level of emotion already brewing over the proposed merger, which would create a company controlling about two-thirds of hospital services in the state. The comment about the clinics on Monday was attributed to Dr. Jeffrey Borkan, who was speaking on behalf the Primary Care Leadership Council before the Special House Commission to Review the Proposal to Merge Lifespan and Care New England. Borkan’s statement focused on concerns about the future of primary care in the state.

Murphy said he agreed that primary care doctors in the community face strains caused by low reimbursements and difficulty recruiting new doctors to the state. But he said the merger could only help by lowering the costs of infrastructure, such as health information technology.

Dr. K. Nicholas Tsiongas, president of the Rhode Island Medical Society, said in a telephone interview yesterday that he wouldn’t criticize Lifespan for its current efforts for caring for the poor. “My critique is that we want to make sure those kinds of services are strengthened and improved through the merger rather than threatened,” he said.

Tsiongas said community doctors fear that the new Lifespan will be powerful enough to negotiate better reimbursement for its affiliated doctors’ groups, leaving less money for everyone else.

“The anxiety really felt on the part of family practice docs, pediatricians, even OB-GYN is pretty much universal,” Tsiongas said.

The medical society has called for moratorium on hospital mergers until after the state develops a plan for organizing health care services around the state. Too many big questions about the merger’s effect remain unanswered, Tsiongas said.

Lifespan and Care New England announced their plans to merge in July but have not yet filed their application with the two state agencies that will review the merger, the Department of Health and attorney general’s office.

ffreyer@projo.com