Hospital district’s plan reads differently than state’s

To the editor,

The Strategic Plan for Washington State Rural Health Care, which was linked to this plan to ensure like methodologies, reads completely differently than EARH’s plan. The state wants the small Critical Care Hospitals to be primary care givers and establish links with and not duplicate regional services. The EARH plan reads like EARH wants to be a regional hospital. To accomplish this, that would require a customer base that is in my opinion unattainable. It does not seem as anyone would drive toward Ritzville for health care when the services needed are as close as Spokane, Moses Lake, Tri-Cities etc.

EARH does not need to start providing endoscopy services that duplicate regional service. Too much money that does not need to be spent and will never return a profit are scheduled to be spent by EARH, including $1.5 million for Electronic Medical Records. The state says that rural hospitals should weigh the need versus the cost of such programs and may decide they are not worth it.

Same thinking should apply to a new hospital building. It is an illusion in my opinion that a favorable needs assessment will be granted when applied for. The EARH is not seeing enough patients and profit feasibility is not foreseeable. Rent a doctor is not going to be a big drawing card and I do not see a Ritzville grad about to complete med school who will come back to the home town to practice. On the other hand, hospital administrators are not hard to come by. However, the board may have to read a few résumés to find one who would simply follow the state recommendations to keep the primary care and ER functioning profitably.

Huge mistakes have been made at EARH. First with the drug store and the local doctors contracts, and many more will follow if these plans are implemented.

The SWOT Plan states many times that one of the main threats comes from the attitude of the people (voters), the media and the possible outcome of an election. If your constituents, of whom you the board are accountable to, are perceived as threats, then it should be obvious you are headed in the wrong direction and failure will and should be eminent.

If you truly want to inform us as you say, then please keep us abreast of how all the new decisions and policies are working out and how we are remaining fiscally profitable.

In my opinion, Mark Barglof’s approach seems to be to hire all of his cronies from Odessa and spend all the money as fast as possible. Why not? He has an ironclad contract and the backing of the board.

Case in point; $18,000 for this worthless document.

Charles Krause, Ritzville