EDITORIAL
Health care closings can be viewed as the end, or start of a new era
When the doors of Little River Rockdale Hospital—the former Richards Memorial Hospital—were locked last Wednesday for the first time in 45 years it’s difficult to know what exactly happened on so many levels.
Most importantly, at this point, we don’t know if that act was the end of the book or just the end of the chapter.
Some who know the ins and outs of the health care business—and nobody in this town knows more than Dr. John M. Weed III, who was quoted extensively in a Reporter story last week—believe Rockdale health care will re-emerge in a different form, scaled back but still available locally.
There’s obviously a market. Our town’s health care facilities have been averaging 2,500 visits a month prior to the cataclysm of the past few weeks.
Why wouldn’t some savvy provider want a piece of that action?
But, as Hamlet famously said “there’s the rub.” It’s all about delivering that health care and doing it in a way that ensures you can keep on delivering it.
What exactly happened to cause the closings? The previous crises in the hospital’s life have been triggered by different dynamics. We were told in the 1980s the solution was more usage by local residents. That happened, as is evidenced by the figures quoted above.
Then we were told an influx of money was needed, that sales and property taxes were critical to facilities staying open. That happened too.
Then we entered the era of our local facilities being part of something bigger, of being the hub of a provider group that encompassed more than Rockdale, with facilities in other towns and regions.
Whatver happened in the past couple of years which brought about these recent events seems to have been tied in with that concept, whether the closings were over lab billings and remunerations, as has been suggested, or other factors.
It’s worth noting that Dr. Weed characterized the situation as something that has happened recently and did not have its origins in Rockdale.
He maintained the local hospital has been stable financially for 10 years.
That, of course, means the problems which caused 1700 Brazos and 602 North Main to close down did not originate at 1700 Brazos and 601 North Main.
It’s worth noting that Little River Health Care’s website invited browsers to “learn more about the world-class medical industry growing around the corner in Georgetown, Killeen, Temple, Round Rock, Austin, Waco, Rockdale, and Cameron.”
The task which now faces the Rockdale Hospital District board, which continues its search for a partner to re-start the health care facilities, is to find one whose focus will be on the community which saved those facilities four times.
And certainly would have tried this time. If only Rockdale had known how to do it.—M.B.
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