Critical list

EDITORIAL

Rockdale’s hospital needs some help as the community searches for hope

First, let’s clear up something that’s obvious to anyone who has been a longtime Rockdale resident. When you hear Little River-Rockdale Hospital referred to as “Rockdale’s hospital” instead of “the hospital in Rockdale” it’s because that’s what it is. For 44 years this community has supported what was first named Richards Memorial Hospital with its hard work, its pocketbooks, its energy and, most important of all, its heart. How many hospitals have seen 5K runs, bake sales, wrestling matches—yes, wrestling matches—and children selling livestock to help them remain open? Rockdale’s has. How many hospitals have had their community voters create a special district with taxing authority and then paid both sales taxes and property taxes for several years to help them over perilous times? Rockdale’s has. In fact, Rockdale has had a special relationship with its hospital for much longer than 44 years. Our town has had a hospital since 1949 when Richards Clinic & Hospital was founded by Drs. John T. Richards and John J. Hopper. It was named for Dr. Richards, a Rockdale native. It would not be inaccurate to call him “the patron saint of health care” in our town. So, Rockdale’s relationship with its health care facilities has always been special. And now, for the fifth time, there’s a crisis. The community, with help from industry and a ton of hard work by people who care, has rallied to save it four times in the past. But this time has a different feel. We could be wrong. We hope we’re wrong. Please, let us be wrong. How did we get to this point? It’s difficult to have an informed opinion about how health care operates in 2018. It is, to use Winston Churchill’s famous phrase, “a riddle, inside a mystery, wrapped in an enigma.” And the current Chapter 11 bankruptcy situation adds an extra layer of uncertainty, if that’s possible. But anyone can see the lay of the land just by looking at what would become the closest full hospital facilities to Rockdale if the unthinkable happened—Baylor Scott & White in Taylor and CHI St. Joseph’s in Caldwell. Did you catch those names? Yes, giant health care operations keeping facilities going in small towns. That’s the way things work now and bake sales, 5K runs and wrestling matches won’t change it this time around. That is what Little River, out-of-town people who hold the cards in the bankruptcy and the hospital board are trying to do, find some bigger partner with the capital, and the inclination, to do something similar for us. You’d have to think there are many with the capital. The inclination may be another story. It’s not a factor for the big health care operations in other places, whoever they are, that apparently hold the fate of our hospital, but we’re going to say it anyway. The heart and soul of a community needs to be considered as they make this decision. Because that’s what our hospital is to Rock-dale.—M.B.