This letter is to the board of Hays Medical Center regarding their recent response to the staffing issues at the hospital.
While I and others appreciate you speaking out to the public, I believe you are missing the point. The people who post on social media are not interested in your data or accolades; they are, however, interested in whether or not they will have a doctor tomorrow morning when they wake up.
I would take the time to fact-check you if I weren’t spending all of my time looking for a new surgeon, oncologist, pulmonologist and OB-GYN.
If you cared so much about our local health care system, perhaps you would spend more time perfecting your art of negotiation rather than the art of saving face.
A mediator could be a solution to the problem instead of spending more valuable dollars (of which you claim to be short) on a lawsuit just to prove a point.
As you put it, you “do not have the luxury of making decisions based on the wants or needs of a particular individual." I am an INDIVIDUAL, and I have wants and needs as well. I guess the luxury to make a decision based on my needs does not count.
Numerous staff have been let go at the hospital – not just physicians. I remember calling to schedule a PET scan in January/February earlier this year, and the gal who helped me said that she was so overwhelmed by all the work she had because of the layoffs.
When my mother was in the hospital around that same time, we were told that nursing staff had been laid off and the nurses were overwhelmed with the number of patients they had to take care of.
Patients were being discharged as quickly as possible because they simply did not have the staff.
Nurses also had the added responsibility for cleaning patient rooms because the cleaning staff were also being laid off. (That is interesting that a hospital of all places would lay off cleaning staff.)
If you actually truly care about our local health care and the patients in the area, you would make the effort to keep your staff.
It is no wonder that you are getting back on your feet financially. You have just recovered salaries totaling millions of dollars from those who no longer work there.
Is that your idea of “creating greater efficiencies and reducing costs”? These would not be challenges if you worked harder to keep the great staff you had! Efficiency would be higher, and you would most likely make more money, not less. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that if you have enough staff to give quality care then you can give MORE of that care and not LESS and in turn will make more money.
Hospital billing has now been outsourced overseas. Be sure to save your proof of payment as I have been told that patients are being billed for services they have already paid for. Scheduling tests in a Manhattan hospital are now being outsourced overseas. Is that coming here?
I see a lot of words on paper but have yet to receive a personal letter from the hospital addressing me as a patient who has now lost all of my doctors.
Instead, I have to read it on Hays Post. How caring is that? I also see more notices of doctors leaving than coming on board. Where is the hospital in the recruitment process? Why are we not hearing more about that? I am not going to feel sorry for the board and all of its hard work when their salaries are evident of a self-service.
Physicians who are truly passionate about their work are those who walk the walk and do not need to talk the talk. The physicians, MY physicians who are no longer here, were exactly that! Maybe the board should take some lessons.
— Jodie J Wear-Leiker