‘It will take a community to save our hospitals’

Thursday, May 22, 2008

‘It will take a community to save our hospitals’

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When Gov. Martin O’Malley signs the Prince George’s County Hospital Authority bill today in Annapolis, it will represent new hope for the residents of Prince George’s County and all who use the Prince George’s hospitals. But the bill signing doesn’t mean that the hard work of saving our hospitals is over. In fact, it’s just beginning.

The bill, passed during the 2008 General Assembly session, creates an authority jointly appointed by the governor, the Maryland General Assembly and the Prince George’s County Council and county executive. Once the bill is signed, the clock starts for the parties to appoint negotiators and authority members, reach an agreement on state and county funding for the next two years and issue a Request for Proposal to sell the hospitals, all within 60 days. While the bill was amended during the session to include an additional 30 days for negotiations, if the prescribed period of time passes with no agreement between parties, our hospitals will once again be in real danger of closure. Prince Georgians deserve better — the wrangling over the hospitals during the past few years has left residents fearful and uncertain over the future of health care in the county.

Pastors in Prince George’s County are all of the same mind when it comes to saving the hospitals because we have a unique perspective on their role in everyone’s lives. As ministers working with our congregants and the broader community, we see lives improved and saved by the dedicated health care workers at the hospitals. We see our parishioners saved by Dr. Willie Blair and his team in Prince George’s Hospital’s trauma center and mended at Bowie Health Center and Laurel Regional Hospital. All are treated regardless of their ability to pay or health insurance status.

I’ve had personal experiences with the hospitals too – I had same-day surgery at Prince George’s Hospital Center and couldn’t have been happier with my treatment from everyone there. And when my father-in-law needed skilled nursing care, I recommended Gladys Spellman Specialty Hospital and Nursing Center, where he received excellent and compassionate care until he passed away last year.

It is my deepest hope that our state and county elected officials will come together in a spirit of cooperation to fund and sell the hospitals. Doing so will allow our hospitals to remain open and attract buyers who will grow the institutions into the world-class medical facilities that the Prince George’s community desperately needs. I believe that our elected leaders mean business and will find the funding and political will to bring this proposal into reality.

I know that the troubles at the Prince George’s hospitals are complicated with many factors contributing to the financial problems at the institutions. I choose not to lay blame on one cause more than another. The fact remains that our entire community would be demoralized and devastated if our hospitals were forced to close. Closure would provoke a health care crisis that would resonate across the county and reverberate through the entire region as hospitals in other counties and the District would struggle to meet the demand for services.

Over the last two years, my fellow pastors, particularly [the] Rev. John Jenkins of First Baptist of Glenarden and [the] Rev. Jonathan Weaver of Greater Mt. Nebo AME, and I have had many discussions with our elected leaders about our hospitals and have offered our assistance to Gov. O’Malley, Prince George’s County Council President Samuel Dean and his colleagues, Prince George’s County Executive Jack Johnson and others. Our offer stands because we know that failure in these negotiations is not an option.

We will monitor the tight deadlines to ensure that progress is being made. We know that it will take a community to save our hospitals. We stand ready to do whatever we need to in bringing our community together to support health care in Prince George’s County. We are determined that the hospitals will be stabilized for today and grow to serve the needs of our community for the future.

Perry A. Smith III is thesenior pastor of the First Baptist Church Inc. of North Brentwood.