Hospital Closing, Announcement May Come In 1st Quarter

[Gary Rice]

Aw....

Why should we always look on the dark side of things?

At least we'd still have a building that would be virtually ideal for a cold weather chicken coop.

Think about all those contented hens, clucking and roosting happily on the atrium railings...

...and there'd be plenty of room for them to fly around in there too.

The former surgery area could make perfect harvesting rooms, and the neo-natal area might make a fine hatchery...

...and if the bird flu ever came to Lakewood? Well gee, the building could easily be re-purposed again...

As for those birdie droppings? I can easily think of several places around town to leave them.

Seriously, these days, specialization of medical facilities and services seems to be the way things are going. The days of service replication and maintaining full-service medical facilities in small hospitals seems to be going the way of our full-service gas stations. Having used (and very much appreciated!) the Cleveland Clinic facilities at several of their locations, I certainly do understand their need to limit service replication. I could only guess in the future that the Lakewood facility will indeed continue as a Clinic division, but with more specialized services.

Back to the banjo...

[Jim O'Bryan]

UPDATE

City Council President Mary Louise Madigan has stated on the record.

This is the person who works for the county, is president of council and heads up the Health
Committee for Lakewood, and is Lakewood's Representative to the board has said.

Yeah I have heard rumors too.

We will have Healyhcare but she doesn;t know what it will look like.

And a bunch of political mumbo jumbo, that is BS.

University Circle, no interest
Metro - slight interest years ago
St. Vincent/Catholic Hospitals - Tom George tried when Mayor
Summa - no interest (heard on highest levels)
Timken - no interest (heard on highest levels)

I mentioned to an elected official this week what about Akron Medical/Summa after all we
have their college here. The answer was "No"

Of course it was this member of council that dedicated the last 4 years of her time to
making sure chickens would not happen. So one can only imagine why she hears rumors
too but has nothing to tell her constituents other than fluff.

Pitiful

Here are the issues,

NUMBER ONE - Do we even need a hospital?

The city spent $10,000 to study a hotel for the hospital, why didn't council, planning,
damn someone spend $5,000 on the city without a hospital! WTF!

PLANNING, pssssst, pssssst, planning???? Management?

I hope I am wrong, but...

We were the first one to announce, LeBron James was signing, and the time it would be
announced and the wording, 36 hours before it was announced. Just saying.

.

[Scott Meeson]

NUMBER ONE - Do we even need a hospital?



.

NO!

The Future:https://www.mdlive.com/index.html#telehealth-block

Scott Meeson

[Michael Deneen]

Why is the hen issue being conflated with the hospital?

Hens have been repeatedly mentioned alongside the hospital issue.
The co-mingling of these topics has spread to other online forums.

This sloppy logic has created the notion that backyard hens are somehow responsible for the hospital situation.

[Edward Favre]

There needs to be a very serious, not sarcastic, public discussion of what the loss of the hospital would mean to the future of Lakewood. This would include how we got here, what we did, what we could have done, should have done, lessons learned, and where do we go forward.

Also, the implications of loosing the hospital: Loss of hospital employee income tax revenue, similar loss of income tax revenue from adjoining/adjacent/dependent businesses, devaluation of adjacent properties and resulting loss of property revenue, and of particular importance, loss of the financial support to Lakewood Fire/EMS.

[Gary Rice]

Thinking about all this, I believe that I find myself in agreement with both Mike and Ed.

Someone, or something, seems to be in the process of laying an egg, and a chicken had nothing whatsoever to do with this situation.

Back to the banjo...

[Joe Sgambellone]

And speaking of issues being conflated with the hospital...why is regionalism being blamed for this? The outward population expansion has been going on for decades - to areas where taxes are lower and it is cheaper to build than to renovate. The Avon facility just followed the pattern set forth by a population surge in Lorain county at the expense of Cuyahoga Co.

I'm not happy to be losing the hospital, if it comes to pass. But I won't blame regionalism for it. I blame Obama.

[Jim O'Bryan]

And speaking of issues being conflated with the hospital...why is regionalism being blamed for this? The outward population expansion has been going on for decades - to areas where taxes are lower and it is cheaper to build than to renovate. The Avon facility just followed the pattern set forth by a population surge in Lorain county at the expense of Cuyahoga Co.

I'm not happy to be losing the hospital, if it comes to pass. But I won't blame regionalism for it. I blame Obama.

Joe

Don't blame Obama, Obama's ACA might be the thing that saves us in the end. Was just
speaking with an ambulance driver that said, one of the biggest problems with emergency service is that Westlake Fire get paid more for a call than Lakewood. The difference is in
the health care. I asked "would the ACA fix this?" The answer was yes, and more
Lakewoodites move to ACA and off Medicare, the difference in costs should be smaller.

I want to underline exactly what Ed is saying. We need the serious discussion.

Does Lakewood even need a hospital, or do we need a staging area to stabilize patients?

Women were in the hospital for a week giving birth in the 70s, now it is almost outpatient
care. I asked him if we would be better with a super trauma center, and his answer was
"NO" we need less super trauma centers, and pointed out the Maryland system, where
there 1 super trauma center for the state. One of the amazing advancements in medicine
from the 70s is that most ambulance can handle damn near anything thrown at them. They
can stabilize and link with damn near any hospital, emegicare, or doctor on the run. What
used to be the bread and butter of Emergency Rooms, are now handled in the ambulance.

Mayor Summers and Councilwoman Madigan are correct in the changing look of healthcare.
I am just not convinced, and judging from their comments neither are they ready to say
yes or no to if we need a hospital. So this is why the thread was dropped, RESIDENTS OWN
the hospital and the property, let's talk about it.

.

[Scott Meeson]

And speaking of issues being conflated with the hospital...why is regionalism being blamed for this? The outward population expansion has been going on for decades - to areas where taxes are lower and it is cheaper to build than to renovate. The Avon facility just followed the pattern set forth by a population surge in Lorain county at the expense of Cuyahoga Co.

I'm not happy to be losing the hospital, if it comes to pass. But I won't blame regionalism for it. I blame Obama.

Joe

Don't blame Obama, Obama's ACA might be the thing that saves us in the end. Was just
speaking with an ambulance driver that said, one of the biggest problems with emergency service is that Westlake Fire get paid more for a call than Lakewood. The difference is in
the health care. I asked "would the ACA fix this?" The answer was yes, and more
Lakewoodites move to ACA and off Medicare, the difference in costs should be smaller.

I want to underline exactly what Ed is saying. We need the serious discussion.

Does Lakewood even need a hospital, or do we need a staging area to stabilize patients?

Women were in the hospital for a week giving birth in the 70s, now it is almost outpatient
care. I asked him if we would be better with a super trauma center, and his answer was
"NO" we need less super trauma centers, and pointed out the Maryland system, where
there 1 super trauma center for the state. One of the amazing advancements in medicine
from the 70s is that most ambulance can handle damn near anything thrown at them. They
can stabilize and link with damn near any hospital, emegicare, or doctor on the run. What
used to be the bread and butter of Emergency Rooms, are now handled in the ambulance.

Mayor Summers and Councilwoman Madigan are correct in the changing look of healthcare.
I am just not convinced, and judging from their comments neither are they ready to say
yes or no to if we need a hospital. So this is why the thread was dropped, RESIDENTS OWN
the hospital and the property, let's talk about it.

.

Jim,

For starters, is Lakewood the tail or the dog in this discussion?

[Paul Schrimpf]

"Chickens" is to "cacophony" as "Hospital" is to "silence".

At its peak there were 300-400 people on LO looking for info as the hospital speculation emerged. Clearly the public is ready for discourse and it's raising passions among the people. Where indeed is the public discourse?

[Bill Call]

Mayor Summers and Councilwoman Madigan are correct in the changing look of healthcare.
I am just not convinced, and judging from their comments neither are they ready to say
yes or no to if we need a hospital. So this is why the thread was dropped, RESIDENTS OWN
the hospital and the property, let's talk about it.

There is certainly no need for a new hospital. Then why build one? (HINT: who owns the land out that way?)

It's also a matter of jobs, income, standard of living, taxes collected, population and economic multipliers. 1,600 well paying jobs in Lakewood do a lot more for Cuyahoga County than 1,600 jobs in Lorain County.

If Lakewood convinced the Clinic to close down its Avon hospital and convinced Tri-c to close down its Lorain County campus would the leadership in Avon say, "We really don't need those things. The whole medical industry is changing and Lakewood is only 20 minutes away."

I'm pretty sure they would fight like hell to keep those things. It seems only in Lakewood is the response: "Therrree nooothing weeee can dooooo!

If your job is Lorain County, your doctor is in Lorain County, your college is in Lorain County and you do your shopping in Lorain County why would you live in Cuyahoga County?

And if it doesn't matter where people live or where they work than why are we spending billions in taxpayer subsidies to bribe people to live downtown?

[Jim O'Bryan]

"Chickens" is to "cacophony" as "Hospital" is to "silence".

At its peak there were 300-400 people on LO looking for info as the hospital speculation emerged. Clearly the public is ready for discourse and it's raising passions among the people. Where indeed is the public discourse?

Paul

I would love to agree with this, and for the casual observer it would be true.

NO one is saying they are connected, EXCEPT on time spent by council. There is no one
saying one caused or stopped the other, the question was, How can someone spend so
much time on something trivial, while the big things seemed to escape them. They could
have said Drunk Buses, or Sharows, garage sale signs, etc. or...


FWIW

.

.

[Stan Austin]

But I won't blame regionalism for it. I blame Obama

Yep-- it's all part of that Kenyan colonial imperialist thing

[m buckley]

" Yeah I have heard rumors too". Ms. Madigan is very skilled with her use of the word rumor. Several times her constituents on Grace asked her directly whether or not the apartment building at the end of our street had been sold with plans to tear it down for a parking lot. And several times her response was "it's just a rumor". Problem was the apartment building in question had been sold 6 months prior to our questioning and there had even been preliminary plans shown to the A.R.B at that time. It stretched credulity then that Ms. Madigan did not know of the fate of that apartment building just as it stretches credulity now that she does not know more about the fate of the hospital. This is an administration that runs Lakewood as if it were a privately owned corporation. Summers, Siley, and Madigan treat the residents of Lakewood (their neighbors and constituents) as if we are on a "need to know basis" with regard to issues that have a very real impact on our lives. So whether it's Ms. Madigan deflecting serious questions with her patented "rumor" response or it's Mr. Siley manipulating and distorting the Planning Commission process or on a much more serious level Mr. Summers' grotesque silence concerning a rape in Lakewood, the motivation is the same. We determine what you need to know and when you need to know it. This conduct needs to end with the next election.

[Jim O'Bryan]

While City Council President brags about "hearing some rumors too," those she heads the health
committee, Mayor Summers is upfront, especially back on August 12, 2012 when he said...

From his August 12, blog post...

Wondering about Lakewood Hospital?

... We will begin to address all of these issues and questions in 2013. This Fall, the Hospital Trustees will be shaping a framework to lead us to the best solution for Lakewood. Citizens will be engaged in a thoughtful manner. I believe it is appropriate to begin this thoughtful and complex journey while time is our ally. As news and information develops, I will share it...

...

.