What constitutes 'common sense' health care

If Harry Hughes and the “Citizens for Common Sense Health Care” (which is code talk for “Health Care we don’t have to pay for”) is serious about “sustainable” healthcare in our community, then they and the hospital board, and most of the citizens of our community are in agreement. The differences lie in what constitutes “common sense” health care. I suggest that you ask Harry or any member of the PAC what they envision for “common sense, sustainable” health care for our community.

Based on their letter and a previous one, it seems to me that their goal is to find a larger entity that will either come in here and build a new hospital so they don’t have to pay for it—or that the hospital will close and said entity will open a clinic with no services other than emergency calls. In the first scenario, the governance of the hospital will be done by an out-of-state corporation with no local voice (a small example, did anyone else read in the Worland paper last week that Banner Corporate offices in Phoenix set restricted visiting hours for ALL their hospitals due to influenza in other areas of the country? In the corporate world one size fits all.). In the second scenario if you need anything other than an urgent care-you will have to drive to another town for the most basic of healthcare needs. X-rays. Drive to another town. Outpatient surgery such as a colonoscopy. Drive to another town. Cataract surgery—drive to another town. Having a knee scoped-drive to another town. And, if you need overnight care—you get the picture—drive to another town. Perhaps your family can do that several times depending on your length of stay.

In the most simple terms, the board’s goal is to provide a hospital for the community for the foreseeable future. We need a hospital for the community, for our medical professionals and staff to provide care at the highest level, and to last another 60 years. We want to accomplish this with the goal of retaining local governance of the hospital, while maintaining or expanding affiliations with hospitals that offer specialty services that we cannot offer at home. That is our vision for common sense, sustainable health care.

To write that the hospital board hasn’t already taken the “50,000 foot view” is disingenuous at best. We have been working on this issue since well before the last district election. To hint that the board and administration are not in communication with the regional hospitals is at best misleading. We are distilling it down to what we hope is a manageable, affordable plan to continue and improve health care in our community for the foreseeable future. Every step we take is shared with the community for their feedback.

We met with the county commissioners in the fall in open session to discuss the overall plan and had great discussion with members of the public. We have since hosted two open houses with the Erdman Group, updating the master facility plan. Several members of the community attended both of these meetings, asked great questions and offered suggestions that the board heard and acted on. We expect to host another public meeting with Erdman early in the new year. As the board continues the goal of real sustainable, sensible health care for the community it will be shared first—with the community as a whole. After all it is the community’s hospital and the community’s future that is at stake.

Bill Williams