The Observation Deck

Lakewood Healthcare Data Study

Earlier this year the City of Lakewood commissioned a healthcare study for some data analysis and recommendations by a group of healthcare analytics consultants.

Has it been completed?

Are copies available to the public?

What are the findings?

I checked the City website and did not see anything posted.

On a similar topic, has a list of nominees for the Healthy Lakewood Foundation been made public?

Mr. Kindt, I suspect you are assuming that the talk about "Healthcare needs assessment" was a real attempt to assess the health care needs of the people of Lakewood.

I pretty sure it was all propaganda exercise designed to give the appearance of a careful analysis of the health care needs of the community.

What about Lakewood's 7,000 children?

What about Lakewood's 5,000 veterans?

What about men's health?

The Healthy Lakewood Foundation excludes veterans from its diversity agenda. Why is that?

Mr. Call, it is my understanding that the study has been completed and has been provided to the City.

I do not know any of its findings.

Nor do I know if it will become publicly available.

Beyond what I have written here about the "New Foundation" n/k/a Healthy Lakewood Foundation, I have nothing further to write at this time on that topic.

Mark Kindt wrote:Lakewood Healthcare Data Study

Earlier this year the City of Lakewood commissioned a healthcare study for some data analysis and recommendations by a group of healthcare analytics consultants.

Has it been completed?

Are copies available to the public?

What are the findings?

I checked the City website and did not see anything posted.

On a similar topic, has a list of nominees for the Healthy Lakewood Foundation been made public?

This list has now been published in the Lakewood Observer and on the Deck:

http://lakewoodobserver.com/forum/viewt ... =7&t=24829

Mark Kindt wrote:Lakewood Healthcare Data Study

Earlier this year the City of Lakewood commissioned a healthcare study for some data analysis and recommendations by a group of healthcare analytics consultants.

Are copies available to the public?

What are the findings?

I checked the City website and did not see anything posted.

This report does not appear to have been posted on the City's website as of today's date (5:00 pm).

Here's the update from the Foundation Planning Task Force on the City's website:

"Update July 2, 2018

The Foundation Planning Task Force made its official recommendations to City Council, Mayor Summers, and the Lakewood Hospital Association in June. See here (Link to docs in right hand column) At this time, the proposal is under review. Once it is approved, the Healthy Lakewood Foundation can begin its work of serving the health and wellness needs of the Lakewood community."

It would be interesting to understand what this review process actually consists of; exactly who are the participants in the review process; and whether or not Ohio open meeting requirements apply.

A first-class attorney did all the legal work. The FPTF submitted a qualified list of board members. What's the hold-up?

Mark Kindt wrote: What's the hold-up?

Rumor on the street is that it was released to Council last week, and will be released to the public in the next 30-60 days.

.

The creation of the new foundation is already two years late. It was due to be active in late May or June 2016. (Due 6 months after the execution of the Master Agreement, a deadline now long passed.)

What's a few years and, now a few more months...

For their "new model" of healthcare .... that never arrives.

A bitter irony to note:

About the same time that the City of Lakewood demolishes its public hospital, it will release a healthcare data study about the healthcare needs of its residents.

Or not.

I'm sure that the demolition of our public hospital and the resulting impacts to local emergency-preparedness have nothing to do with the future "resiliency" of our city or community.

http://www.onelakewood.com/resiliency/ --A truly fascinating thread to read.

Heath care infrastructure? What? Who cares?

Somebody should send that committee the 2012 hospital demolition blueprints.

Their July session on healthcare was held, perhaps, 6 years too late....

Some Hyperbole

If Mayor Summers handles "resiliency" like the way he handled the $100M Metro proposal to run our hospital, we'll soon be the only city in Northeast Ohio leading the way with privately-owned, whale-oil street lamps.

.....and with half-a-dozen third-party consultant studies to justify it.

Mark Kindt wrote:I'm sure that the demolition of our public hospital and the resulting impacts to local emergency-preparedness have nothing to do with the future "resiliency" of our city or community.

http://www.onelakewood.com/resiliency/ --A truly fascinating thread to read.

Heath care infrastructure? What? Who cares?

Somebody should send that committee the 2012 hospital demolition blueprints.

Their July session on healthcare was held, perhaps, 6 years too late....

http://www.onelakewood.com/resiliency/

Would viewing connectivity through objective categories relating to both digital and transportation connectivity overburden the connectivity group? Should digital connectivity and health care access via transportation modes be integrated with the existing discussions? Specifically, although, not exclusively, (except in relations to various conflicts between the two) how is my sister in law going to get to Avon to see her doctor?

I was going to trot out the old "Horse Before the Cart" trope in regards to the Foundation's report on health care needs appearing after the hospital was torn down

Specifically, although, not exclusively, (except in relations to various conflicts between the two) how is my sister in law going to get to Avon to see her doctor?

Good question

During the “debate” over losing both the hospital and the physicians, and therefore access, especially for those with difficulty driving or no vehicles, we were promised that at least seniors would be provided transportation to the new facility in Avon.

As far as I can determine, there is NO program in Lakewood that assists seniors who need transportation to Avon to see their doctors.

Was that just another empty promise to tempt people to support the give-away?

Bridget Conant wrote:Was that just another empty promise to tempt people to support the give-away?

Yes it was.

The Context for the Lakewood Healthcare Data Study

If and when, we see the City’s commissioned health care data study, we must read it in the context of significantly reduced services and reduced care. Aside from the obvious facts that Lakewood Hospital will be demolished and hadn't provided care since early 2016, the so-called change to a "new model of healthcare" had some other considerable effects, mostly negative.

There is a good argument to be made that the residents of Lakewood have less access to healthcare now in 2018 than they did in 2010. This reduction falls across the entire population of Lakewood and, perhaps, hardest upon those least able to bear it.

1. The closure of Lakewood Hospital ended (or severely diluted) approximately $7 million in the annual delivery of charity care to those in need. We cannot quantify the value of charity care that might be provided by the Family Health Center, but it will inevitably be less by a considerable magnitude.

2. Neither the newly-opened Family Health Center, nor the former Lakewood Hospital Foundation (n/k/a Three Arches), nor the planned Healthy Lakewood Foundation can remedy this shortfall in care, because the new mix of services delivered or the funding for such services is either greatly diminished in value or represent services now diluted into other regional communities.

3. The closure of Lakewood Hospital and the demolition of its nearby medical office building impaired the delivery of healthcare services by the independent physicians that had privileges at the hospital. Senior physicians retired; others had to move their practices. This has eliminated an important healthcare resource for the city.

4. The next time you talk with a Lakewood first-responder, please ask them whether having a local hospital was valuable for purposes of community emergency-preparedness.

5. The sad irony is that we have witnessed a Republican governor expanding access to Medicaid at the same time that a Democratic mayor was closing an invaluable community hospital (despite competent alternative proposals to operate the hospital on a long-term basis.)

6. The closing of the hospital changes the collection and study of healthcare analytics. There will no longer be a Community Health Needs Assessment done by the hospital related to its Lakewood admissions. The current CHNA done by Fairview Hospital woefully under-counted Lakewood healthcare issues.

7. Lakewood has less physical and financial assets for the delivery of healthcare than it did in 2010 and it changed its municipal charter to remove hospital operations from its scope of permitted governance.

So, long-term public healthcare infrastructure that served the residents was intentionally dismantled to the long-term detriment of residents; and the value of this public infrastructure was transferred or diffused to the alleged benefit of other communities, but more crucially to commercial development purposes.

This all came at a high, but largely invisible, cost to the social and healthcare safety net of our city. This is the true context of the City’s independent health care data study.

May we never forget this loss.