Editor,
As a property owner, I ask the Whidbey General Hospital commissioners, “What were you thinking?”
The current hospital CEO is over-valued for the size and scope of the services provided. She will receive a $70,000 bonus for meeting criteria in the first year.
Raise your hand if you get a bonus for doing your job.
Ann Tarrant, hospital board president, announced that the board is not required to answer questions during a public meeting. Raise your hand if you can ignore input from the boss at work?
The arrogance of that statement might be interpreted as having no ability to justify a series of poor decisions. Perhaps it reflects embarrassment at having been poor stewards of our tax money and trust in voting the current people into positions of responsibility.
The name change is approved by the hospital commissioners with no consideration to cost. Commissioner Georgia Gardner, a CPA, finds it useful because people in her circle don’t know the name of the clinic where they receive care.
Commissioner Grethe Cammermeyer is excited about the focus on health. The hospital hasn’t been focused on Generals, right?
I go to one of the clinics for dressing changes three times a week. The first appointment, Tuesday, created a treasure hunt. There was no 2-by-2 inch sterile gauze. There was sterile gauze rolls to hold dressing in place. There was one bottle of sterile water for cleansing. The splint I will graduate to comes in sizes. The therapist cannot order two, leaving one that will fit well and one for another patient.
The hospital lost three doctors, a family practice physician, an orthopedist, both now practicing in Skagit.
Island Hospital now has one of the surgeons who practiced on Whidbey. All three left because they could not get the equipment they needed for safe practice.
Not one of them wanted to leave and commute or move away from Whidbey.
The physician I see had 20 minutes to diagnose and prescribe. I doubt that provides for safe practice, but it generates income.
It’s clear to me that the commissioner’s decision tree is broken, resulting in people who employ the commissioners to say, “What are you thinking?”
Barbara Benway
Coupeville
