On a Technicality, HCA Kept it's Word

On April Fools Day 2003, Hospital Corporation of America took over the ailing Health Midwest healthcare delivery system, with great fanfare and a promise that no inner-city hospitals would be closed for at least three years.

That was important news, and vital to the Attorney General approving the sale of a community-based non-profit hospital system to a for-profit hospital corporation. It was extremely vital for inner-city KCMO that this promise be extracted, because in the summer of 2001, Health Midwest closed Trinity Lutheran Hospital at 31st and Main in Midtown KCMO. Services at Trinity Lutheran were consolidated with Baptist Memorial, and the new Baptist-Lutheran Medical Center was formed on the Baptist campus at Troost and 65th.

On April 3, 2006 Baptist-Lutheran will cease providing inpatient services. Outpatient services and a bare-bones ER will still operate at the Baptist campus, but all inpatient services will move to Research Medical Center.

This is just one more slap in the face to the inner city populations that were served by Trinity and Baptist. This at a time when funding for Truman Medical Center and the state Medicaid system have seen draconian cuts in funding and have been forced to slash services, and the Samuel U. Rodgers Community Health Center is struggling to survive.

The problems of healthcare access in our fair city are about to reach critical mass. Ah well, all I can do is all I can do. I work a good, well-paying job thirty hours a week so I can volunteer ten at a free clinic. I don't have the answers, I just have a heart.

Trust me, the health-care access rant is coming.