Letters to the Editor

Letter: South Anchorage ER realities

South Anchorage residents do deserve an emergency room, but that’s not what they will be receiving if the Hospital Corporation of America’s proposed facility is approved. In their commentary on Oct. 24, Cindi Whitt, Karen Andrade and Tina Thomas raised the example of “an elderly neighbor falls and fractures a hip.” I wonder what they think will happen to that neighbor when he gets to the proposed facility.

He won’t get to see an orthopedic surgeon, and he certainly won’t go to an operating room to have his hip repaired, because there won’t be one. Instead, he will get to meet an emergency physician, who will bill him both for his professional services and a facility fee. Then, he will call an ambulance and have him transported to, say, Alaska Regional Hospital. Because this is a higher level of care, he will have the opportunity to meet another emergency physician and be billed again for her services and for a second facility fee.

Then he can have his hip fracture repaired in an actual hospital.

As a physician with family on the Hillside, I love the idea of closer emergency medical care, but I don’t believe the proposed Hospital Corporation of America facility will actually help my loved ones. If you have a heart attack, it’s vitally important that you get to see a cardiologist, as fast as you can, so she can open your blocked artery and restore blood flow to the threatened tissue.

When a large artery is blocked, we measure ourperformance as a team in minutes. But there won’t be a cardiologist at HCA’s Hillside storefront. Instead, you’ll get tovisit with an emergency physician, who will then decide to transfer you to a real hospital. During the time you spent waiting to be seen At HCA Hillside, being evaluated, being loaded into an ambulance and being driven north, the cells in your heart will be dying.

The same is true during a stroke, but the cells dying are in your brain, and they are responsible for your ability to swallow solid food or remember your granddaughter’s face.

I would love to see an emergency room and a hospital on the Hillside so that residents could have easy access to high-quality care, but that’s not what they will receive. It’s hard for me to imagine the scenario in which one would be best served by going to HCA’s Hillside outpost.

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Most problems would be better served in a primary care office because they are straightforward, or in a hospital-based emergency room because they need the multidisciplinary team that a hospital provides.

HCA’s proposed profit center is neither.

— Dr. Ryan G. Webb

Hospitalist medical director, Providence Alaska Medical Center

Anchorage

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