SPECTATOR – LOSING PART OF OUR COMMUNITY HOSPITAL?

  

Just when I thought our community was taking a step forward with health care, Baylor Scott & White Health Systems may be blindsiding us.  A special meeting is being held this week with local members of the Baylor Scott & White Board concerning Labor and Delivery Services at the Brenham hospital.  Word on the street is that the folks in Temple have already made the decision to discontinue offering childbirth services at our local hospital.  Let’s hope that is not the case, and that our local board members will be able to stop what would be a horrendously bad move by Baylor Scott & White.  It’s a move that would set Brenham healthcare back to the 1800’s…back before we had a community hospital.  It appears our past may be our future, where we no longer have a “community” hospital.  Baylor Scott & White’s rather cryptic statement about this week’s special meeting referred to the $4 million commitment they have recently made to growing services in the Brenham area.  I’m assuming that was in reference to their recent acquisition of The Brenham Clinic…a move that I hoped would improve the healthcare situation locally.  For the first time in many years doctors at the Brenham Clinic would be sending patients to our local hospital, and not to College Station.  That alone would be a shot in the arm for our hospital.  It was only 4 years ago that a ribbon cutting was held in Brenham for the recently remodeled Birth Center.  A portion of that remodeling was paid for by donations to the local hospital foundation.  I dare say that over the years Brenham and Washington County have contributed much more than $4 million to the hospital through charitable donations to that foundation.  I’ve already heard folks say that their “giving days are over” if Baylor Scott & White discontinues childbirth services here.  In 2009, what was then Trinity Community Medical Center parted ways with the Franciscan Service Corporation because they no longer allowed them to do tubal ligations.  John Simms, hospital President and CEO at the time said, “We felt because we’re a rural hospital, we needed to be a full service hospital.  We didn’t have any options for the ladies and we didn’t feel we should have to send them out of town for this procedure.”  I’m sure John Simms never foresaw a day when local ladies would be sent out of town to have a baby.  Let’s hope that day isn’t coming soon.

And that’s the way it looks to this Spectator.