Wrong Business Model Fosters Wrong Decisons

To the Editor:

Our County Commissioners have now met with and listened to both the CHC and St. Mark’s management team voicing opinions about the hospital’s current operation. The words I read in the Record’s report were not encouraging. I read repetitions of similar assessments made publically in 2019, when the St Mark’s board and its employees forced a county-wide vote seeking to officially create a dedicated taxing entity so as to permanently fund a failed business model.

With this presentation, we are introduced to yet another concept dependent on insufficient support from some recently-contrived federal agency. We are told this funding will not ensure a budget capable of paying the existing debt. These people also encourage us to use existing hospital services, that buying lab work at the hospital will ensure its success. That single idea along with the others mentioned confounds me greatly, since all such services are already available nearby, and are, in my opinion often offered at higher levels of technical performance.

The fact no other competent, financially-stable medical organization has offered to buy St Mark’s in its current form is proof that bankruptcy is the only tool for cleansing; bankruptcy may allow a proper re-formulation of this medical business. Whatever the outcome, pouring more money into St Mark’s, whether public or private funds, seems to be utterly foolish.