What would compromise look like?
Posted: Sat Oct 10, 2015 2:03 pm
Since that cold, dark night in January when the Mayor and friends disclosed their plan, much has been said, millions have been spent, and the CCF plan has not changed much at all, while SLH and other opponents have dug in with increasingly frustrated rhetoric. To acknowledge, the CCF plan has changed some: instead of a major outpatient center, it is now a building across the street that combines two existing CCF Lakewood offices (they will close) with some kind of medical clinic for some minor emergency needs. The parking structure goes away and a six acre commercial development takes the place of the hospital. Meanwhile the conversation has become more and more heated with hardly anyone listening to what the other side has to say.
The question I raise is, what if some form of compromise was proposed? What would it look like? What if the City were able to get a better deal from CCF or, more likely, some other health care organization?
Of course a continuation of hospital services like Metro proposed - and the City ignored - would be a no-brainer. But are there other options?
For instance, what if they proposed a full service outpatient clinic with nearly every service a hospital offers minus the beds, with a true emergency room operating at some level of the trauma center scale (1-5)? What if they did that along with a few beds to accommodate overnight cases?
That's not my plan, but I'm just asking: is there room for compromise, or is this a fight to the death? The death of one or the other plans, and possibly, as Brian Essi has pointed out, the unnecessary deaths of Lakewood residents.
The question I raise is, what if some form of compromise was proposed? What would it look like? What if the City were able to get a better deal from CCF or, more likely, some other health care organization?
Of course a continuation of hospital services like Metro proposed - and the City ignored - would be a no-brainer. But are there other options?
For instance, what if they proposed a full service outpatient clinic with nearly every service a hospital offers minus the beds, with a true emergency room operating at some level of the trauma center scale (1-5)? What if they did that along with a few beds to accommodate overnight cases?
That's not my plan, but I'm just asking: is there room for compromise, or is this a fight to the death? The death of one or the other plans, and possibly, as Brian Essi has pointed out, the unnecessary deaths of Lakewood residents.