Two Fine Hospitals
Dear Editor: What agony! Torture! When will it end? Will hospital issues continue to be contentious forever?
I watched the Assembly meeting on Channel 11 on January 29. And I hurt for our Assembly members – good, smart, caring citizens. And I was puzzled, and tried to understand: Whose idea was The Merger anyway? Was our city in such a dire state over the dam and electric costs that Sitka had to come up with selling our community hospital? (For a measly $9 million?) Or did the Feds and SEARHC approach the city at a particularly vulnerable time?
When did all this get started? All these consultants from Outside. Extra attorneys to help negotiate the details. When did a sort of creeping, growing dependence on Outside experts start? Can’t we make our own mistakes? For less costs, and a lot more understanding of local history, qualities, and small town values? Did a compelling need for technology do it? Did anyone ask longtime Sitkans what they like about the Sitka Community Hospital? Good experiences? Survival. Recovery. What about the many employees over the decades? What did they like about working there? The good stuff. The kind of qualities we would like to see continued and enhanced on both sides of the Bridge.
As I listened and watched the continuing struggle of the Assembly trying so hard to do what is right for Sitka, I realized what a drop-out I have become. Intimidated by “just go to the web” mentality. I want hard copy to hold, to read, on important issues. I need Shannon Haugland’s excellent coverage in the Sitka Sentinel in a folder, labeled and dated and in the Sitka Public Library so the history of momentous events is available. I’d like to reread the perceptive, from the heart, letters to the editor that have addressed hospital topics over the last 50 years! Now THAT is a feat to celebrate!
Five months ago, August 28, my husband, Bill Davis, died at age 89 in the Sitka Pioneers Home of bladder cancer. That was the night the Assembly met and voted to move ahead on the merger that had been proposed and worked on, apparently, for a very long time.
I did not realize until last week that I LIKE both hospitals! Both hospitals have provided excellent, professional, quality care for Bill, saving his life many times over the last 10 years. I just can’t register what the merger, the “take over” would mean to overall health care in Sitka.
Health care means a lot to us all. Sitka is a wonderful place to be raised in. And Sitka is a wonderful place to grow old and die in. During Bill’s last year we had so many supportive services including healthy meals cheerfully delivered from the Senior Center. Skillful Caravan transportation provided important mobility, and Home Health compassion and knowledge, exceptional. I will always be amazed and so grateful for the remarkable services, expertise, kindness, support we both received.
Thank you all who are a part of this grand, complex health care system: both hospital boards, both hospitals, all employees in all their jobs. Let’s all try, hard, to think horizontally, and back and forth, not just up and down. And let the courageous decision makers know they are appreciated.
How might we older folk have a meaningful, supportive voice? I for one do not want to be embedded and embalmed in a computer chip.
Thank you. Gunalcheesh. Salamat. Gracias.
Nancy Yaw Davis, Sitka
