Editor, Commonwealth:
The stakes are very high. In fact it is a matter of life and death. Literally. I have had members of my congregation who likely would have died without the timely help of Greenwood Leflore Hospital. Having good doctors and nurses, a good emergency room and a good hospital nearby saves lives. Without a good hospital nearby, people will die.
Can you think about Greenwood without GLH? What if that institution no longer existed? Do you think there’s a guarantee it will be here 10 years from now? Better think again. The entire medical landscape is changing. What if the people in charge out there fumble this ball? Lots and lots of jobs will be lost. Good doctors and nurses have other places they can go. Their skills travel. Do you think there is a long line of good doctors and nurses anxious to move here? Not likely.
Apparently, the Greenwood City Council and the Leflore County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously for GLH to affiliate with another hospital organization. The medical staff at GLH agreed. There are indeed advantages to such an affiliation. (By the way, the GLH Board chairman, Sammy Foster, said at Tuesday afternoon’s City Council meeting that the letter from the medical staff on this matter “did not have any signatures on it.” Really? He wants us to think someone circulated a false letter on behalf of the doctors? It would have been easy enough to check out if he doubted the letter’s authenticity. It would have been equally implausible if he had said that the letter was written and delivered by aliens. The only person who doubts that letter’s authenticity is someone who really didn’t want to hear from the doctors in the first place. Why is that? Perhaps he’s already made up his mind about the situation and is not open to any counsel.)
The three present members of the GLH Board in their considered wisdom spurned the opportunity for affiliation. Why? Well surely they must have a better plan! Obviously they are smarter than the city and county officials and the doctors of GLH. The affiliation could have been dropped at any point by the hospital if things had not worked out. But no, the board didn’t even give it a chance.
So what is the board’s better idea? That question was asked of Mr. Foster at Tuesday afternoon’s meeting of the City Council. Mr. Foster’s answer to that question convinced me that he believes in magic! He thinks the right CEO will magically solve everything. That is apparently why this board dismissed the last CEO. His magic wand didn’t work. He couldn’t turn iron into gold, or to be more specific, he could not turn uninsured, non-paying patients into patients with good insurance and money in the bank. You had a good CEO. It didn’t fix the problems. I understand they really like him in Starkville.
I hate to break it to Mr. Foster but CEOs are not issued magic wands. Hospitals are closing all over the country, especially in blighted areas. It’s not the fault of the CEOs. It’s much more complex than that. Without some affiliation, without the knowledge and expertise and personnel and economies of scale offered by an affiliation, small hospitals these days have an uphill climb ... and some are not going to make it.
You can’t have a school without teachers. You can’t have a hospital without doctors. To ignore the doctors at GLH is both arrogant and foolish. It is a prescription for failure. Failure in this case will be devastating, especially to the poor who depend on this hospital more than most. Many of them won’t be able to get anywhere else for care. Apparently, the hospital board hasn’t thought much about these folks.
The board seems more interested in power and control and being in charge. With at least 150 concerned citizens at Tuesday night’s hospital board meeting, Mr. Foster deigned to grant three minutes to one person to ask some questions, to which no one on the board had the decency to even acknowledge the questions with a single answer. These board members are acting like little dictators. They are supposed to represent the people of this community and area. These folks couldn’t have cared less on Tuesday night. Those 150 persons were treated like trespassers — the very people who own this community hospital and who cared enough to show up and express their concern for the future.
Sadly, if that board does not reverse its decision and find a good affiliation with some group that can help the hospital, then their ineptitude and shortsightedness are going to be felt around here for years and decades to come. They may have already pushed Greenwood off a cliff, dismissing a CEO with no ready plan to replace him, and turning down a worthy suitor. Feels good, I reckon, to be a board in charge, thinking you know better than everyone else. But you may just be the kings and queens of an empty building at some point.
If you work at GLH, and I don’t care if you are black, white, green or polka dot, you might want to get the attention of the hospital board because your jobs are at stake right now. If you operate a business here, have employees, or have investment in a farm or real estate, you might want to get their attention as well. If your health is suspect at this point, if you are an older person who relies on health care here, you might want to get their attention also, because without a good hospital here, people are going to die.
A boat will sink if you knock a big hole in the side of it. Even a battleship will sink if you do that, no matter its previous history or accomplishments. The stakes are very high here.
Dr. Rusty Douglas
Greenwood
Editor’s note: Neither the Greenwood City Council nor the Leflore County Board of Supervisors voted on the question of affiliation. What they both unanimously approved was to go forward with a feasibility study, the first step in possibly leasing the hospital.
