Home Health
Dear Editor: I was 2,700 miles away when the news broke that SEARHC was going to shut down the Home Health Department. But news travels fast, especially when it’s bad news in Sitka. And that was VERY BAD NEWS indeed. Having recently returned to Sitka after spending some precious days with a friend in hospice care, I got to experience again first hand how powerful and perfect it can be for someone to spend their last days in the comfort of their own home.
One of the problems with the SEARHC administration has been the lack of transparency and positive, proactive communication with the community when it comes to getting rid of popular and important medical or community health services.
This is an ongoing and historic issue. I remember the lack of communication when they closed the Bill Brady Healing Center, and Raven’s Way, and the child care center. And there were a myriad of innovative health promotion programs that were being run out of the Community Health building – most of them are gone now. Shutting down these services has primarily been about the bottom line, and not about what is truly best for the community. Regarding Home Health Care services, Sitka is an aging community, and with aging comes even greater health care needs, not less! Shutting down Home Health leaves a giant gap in care services.
SEARHC got its way with taking over the Sitka Community Hospital four years ago. The whole premise of the takeover was that “the consolidated medical care will be better for all Sitkans. So get on board people!” I so clearly remember this emphatic message being driven home to all of us attending the communitywide meetings held at Centennial Hall. But how does that message jive with some of SEARHC’s administrators getting paid exorbitant salaries, plus spending millions for a brand new hospital facility, while at the very same time demising an ESSENTIAL service for elders and disabled community members? SEARHC is also spending hundreds of thousands of dollars bringing in traveling nurses and other medical providers, and building brand new buildings to house them, while eliminating jobs for the many excellent local nurses we all know and love from Home Health. This just does not make sense.
SEARHC needs to take good care for our community members and patients who are ill, homebound, and disabled and it becomes harder and harder to deliver without in-home services to rely on. It is very difficult for these patients to travel to medical appointments, or really anywhere at all for that matter. Is there any plan to provide in-home, end-of-life services, palliative care services, or hospice-like services in Sitka? Will people have to go down south not just for specialized medical care, but also now to die peacefully in a home setting? I foresee this happening. Home Health has provided very crucial services in our community, and the lack of them will surely cause much distress for patients and families alike. These major gaps will have to be addressed!
As the founding executive director of Brave Heart Volunteers, my primary vision was always to be a solid partner with the Home Health staff, Center for Community, the Swan Lake Senior Center, SAIL, with medical providers, and also with close friends and family members. Our vision was that if someone desired to die with dignity in the peace of their own home, they absolutely should be able to do that! And they would have the support of skilled, trained, licensed medical providers, and compassionate, trained, volunteer caregivers at their side.
In addition to directing BVH, I was also an RN Case Manager for SEARHC’s COVID hotline, the MEHS Clinic, Kake and Angoon Elder Care Services, and OPD. I also spent years as an intermittent RN health consultant for Center for Community, and was a Home Health visiting nurse case manager at Sitka Community Hospital. So I do have some experience in these matters. Dr. Eliot Bruhl was always a positive and vocal supporter of the vision of providing hospice-like care in Sitka, and spent time volunteering as an educator for the Brave Heart Volunteers end-of-life training teaching us specifically about ethics in medicine. So I know that this decision must weigh heavy on him.
A peaceful, “walking into the forest” has been accomplished so many times since the inception of Brave Heart Volunteers, 22 years ago now. Individuals, families, friends, doctors and community health providers have all been extremely grateful for this option. So I ask the SEARHC administration, what are you going to do to fulfill your mission to serve people in this regard? Please be very clear and forthcoming with us. We are your “Partners in Health,” after all.
Along with so many others, I ask you to reverse your decision to close Home Health, put the people’s needs first, and fulfill your mission to provide the best health care for our community. Please don’t take Sitka backwards by eliminating an essential health care service. Stand up to the challenge of the day, and recreate a vital, Home Health Department, that can do BOTH things – be financially viable, AND serve the community’s needs by providing excellent, professional, in-home medical care.
Auriella Hughes (Retired RN) and Brave Heart Volunteer
Cruise Ships
Dear Editor: I was pleased to see that man wanted to reduce the number of cruise ships coming into Sitka.
I’d like to suggest even a more powerful way. Let’s have a Sitka Day when no cruise ships come into Sitka. One day a week for residents to take their families and guests to Fortress of the Bear or the Alaska Raptor Center and not be swamped.
We had a couple of days this summer when visitors were 10,000 – that’s more than the number of residents in Sitka.
I think it fair for us to have one day a week without cruise ships. Give us a day!
M.A. Hall, Sitka
