Hospital Makeover Leaves "Orphans" At Our Door

I recently watched the episode of the "Extreme Makeover" TV show in which the Design Team built a new home for a Louisville family, and the joy of seeing a deserving family move into a new home more suited to their needs warmed my heart. The special "apartment" within the new house custom-tailored for the needs of the blind and wheelchair-bound Patrick Henry Hughes was especially well done.

But what if the Design Team had intentionally not built the rooms for the other Hughes brothers--and the parents had approved the design? Wouldn't that have been unthinkable?

Effectively, that's what the administrators and designers of the new Harrison County Hospital have done. While the new hospital was sorely needed, and while it's much more suited to its purpose than the hospital's old campus, the hospital designers and administrators intentionally left out any space allocation for either the Harrison County EMS or the Harrison County Health Department...and only mentioned their omission to the County Council after the new hospital building was essentially complete.

Think about that for a moment. That move is the fiscal equivalent of leaving two "orphans" on the council's doorstep while moving the rest of the family into a new home. Historically, the health department and the hospital have always operated together. That's only logical, since the business of the hospital is related to the health of the community. And since its inception in the 1970's, Harrison County EMS and the hospital have literally and figuratively been joined at the hip. Now, suddenly [and unexpectedly, for the taxpayers of Harrison County] the hospital board has decided that providing a home for these unwanted stepchildren--for whom the taxpayers of the county must still provide a roof over their heads--isn't their responsibility. Apparently the taxpayers didn't need to know about that until after the new hospital was completed.

So now county leaders, already faced with the daunting task of finding a buyer who will take the old hospital campus off their hands [and who will put that property onto the county tax rolls], are handed the task of finding new digs for EMS and the health department, essentially at the eleventh hour. In my view, the actions of the hospital board border on duplicity. As a taxpayer, I'm outraged that the disposition of EMS and the health department "never came up" when discussions of building the new hospital were going on. So now even more tax money will need to be allocated for a new building for EMS--for which the hospital board has already "allotted" a space on their new grounds. So don't think for a minute that the hospital board didn't "plan" for this "emergency" to occur. And the net result is, the taxpayers didn't see it coming because the hospital board apparently intended the taxpayers be blindsided.

Of course, the health department doesn't have to be located at the hospital. Their function encompasses a lot more than just birth and death records, and I'm sure that office space can be found at a number of places within Corydon, the county seat, that would suffice. But had county officials been aware of the need to seek a new home for the health department from the time that the new hospital blueprints were completed, a smooth transition could have been well underway by now. Why the hospital board chose to conceal from the taxpayers their plans to "orphan" the EMS and the health department is a mystery to me.

Of course, the hospital board has informed county officials that they already have a partner lined up to share the new unplanned, unbuilt EMS facility. SkyCare, a regional helicopter ambulance service, would lease part of this proposed new EMS facility, helping to defray some of the operating expense, if none of the initial building costs. But that's small comfort to the taxpayers who didn't expect to have to build a separate EMS building in the first place. And then surprising the taxpayers with the need to find a new home for the health department at the same time is a double whammy...and one that, in my opinion, could have been avoided had the hospital administration and board have been more forthcoming and pointed these details out in the meetings that preceded the building of the new hospital.

Now it's obvious that the hospital intended all along to separate themselves from EMS and the health department. But as a taxpayer, I think it would've been considerate of the hospital administration to have spelled out their intentions from the beginning. Sure, it's "only money"...but it's only MY money, and YOUR money and the money of the other taxpayers, that's being spent here. And if riverboat gambling funds are diverted to cover these "unexpected contingencies," those are riverboat gambling funds that are being diverted from other potential uses. And that means that the expenses for which those funds could have otherwise been used WILL come out of the taxpayers' pockets.

I just wish the hospital administrators would have been straight with the taxpayers from the get-go, and not left a pair of "orphan" departments on our doorstep just as the hospital triumphantly moves into its palatial new facility.