The Observation Deck

WOW....this is incredibly incriminating of this City Hall.

If you believe Mr. Gilman's rather tall tale, the Clinic and City Hall was BLINDSIDED by the opioid crisis.
If Gilman is telling the truth, that would mean that Gilman, Summers, City Council, and the Clinic are all grotesquely stupid and negligent.
As demonstrated by the evidence presented by Mr. Kuhns, this is not the case. City Hall knew about the epidemic years ago, bringing in people like Katie Kurtz.
The Clinic keeps track of Emergency Room stats, so they knew what was going on.

That leaves only one conclusion:
Issues like the opioid crisis were intentionally omitted from the Community Needs Assessment so that the Clinic and City Hall could peddle the notion that "Lakewood doesn't need a hospital anymore".

Gilman, as leader of the EMTs, knew there was an opioid crisis....but he shamelessly played along with the charade in order to keep his job.
He showed the same cowardice as City Council, Jen Pae, and Kevin Butler.
That's especially troubling since the Hospital Haters used Gilman as a prop to sell their scheme to the public. He was "trusted fire chief"....people love firefighters, so what better shill to sell your con than having a puppet like Gilman deliver your talking points?

Shameful and sad.

Please see the attached. That's right - we knew we had an EPIDEMIC in Northeast Ohio in 2013. You cannot disconnect an inner ring suburb from NOE when speaking on these issues. See page 3 for a graph of deaths 2007-2013 and a prediction for 2014 (with & without the program DAWN).

The Heroin and Opioid Epidemic in Northeast Ohio:
One Year Report to the Community
November 2014

"INTRODUCTION
The Heroin Summit, held November 2013 at the Cleveland Clinic, signaled a major call to action to address the growing public health emergency presented by heroin use and overdose deaths. Despite the year-long focus, deaths due to heroin and opioids, in part or in full, continue to proliferate in Cuyahoga County, around Ohio and across the nation. Despite the disappointing and tragic number of deaths, a wide variety of measures have been undertaken or are in development, without which, we believe the death toll may have been higher."

We knew and CCF knew (see page 1 of attached for all groups including hospitals - including CCF that were aware and involved in this community report.) Heck, the Summit was held at the Cleveland Clinic.

So tired of the bologna slung by our "leaders" and their mouthpieces. CCF has no intentions of serving our real needs - only the healthcare they can make money from. When will this end? When our elected officials stand up for us and we stand up for ourselves, in person, and by electing leadership that gives a damn (that's right- I said damn) about us.

pam

Meguesses there is no money in opioid treatment, which is why the CCF would conveniently omit it.

http://fox8.com/2017/02/08/lakewood-ask ... iod-abuse/

I may have cited the above before, but it is interesting to note that the City of Lakewood just asked for state and federal help regarding the crisis in February of 2017, according to the above. Yet the meeting minutes that Ms. Wetula cites seems to indicate there was a problem in 2013 at the latest, and probably earlier. There is nothing like waiting until you're up to your butt in alligators before realizing the point was to drain the swamp. I will congratulate City Hall though, as there is also the expression "better late than never".

Since CCF appears to cater to wealthy and insured patients, what will they do when the only patients at the "ER" are those addicted to opioids? I suppose they will "jump ship" and make the City of Lakewood buy the building back from them, as I believe is in the Master Agreement.

So let's sum up what we learned.

The 2016 Health Needs Assessment for Lakewood DID NOT include anything about the opioid epidemic.

Our Fire Chief Scott Gilman claims he didn't know there was one until 2014.

We know that is laughably false.

He also stated that the 2016 report was already completed prior to their suddenly realizing their was a problem in 2014.

So, if true, the 2016 Health Needs Assessment is terribly out of date and inaccurate and should not be used as a basis for any decision making regarding services needed in the Lakewood community.

What does this indicate about the people and institutions that serve us?

Who do they work for?