A protest effort by more than thirty local doctors to breathe new life into Shore Regional Health System’s hospital in Chestertown is gathering steam.
A community meeting has been planned with concerned citizens on Sunday, January 10 at 2:00 PM at the Chestertown Firehouse, at Maple Avenue (Rte. 213) and Cross Street.
State Senator Steve Hershey and Delegates Jay Jacobs and Steve Arentz have joined the doctors’ public declaration that the University of Maryland Shore Regional Health System should maintain inpatient services in Chestertown and restore some of the services that have been reduced or lost in Chestertown since the UM Medical System took over the hospital on July 1, 2008.
The legislators will host the public meeting.
The legislators and doctors will explain that the Shore Regional Health System board of directors, are scheduled to vote this spring on a proposal to close Chestertown’s inpatient nursing unit. If the vote passes, the closure would take effect after Shore builds a long-planned new hospital in Easton, likely in about five years.
Dr. Gerard O’Connor, Dr. Wayne Benjamin, the legislators and community leaders will list medical services that are no longer available in Chestertown; they will raise an alarm about the possible loss of inpatient services in Chestertown; and they will stress the importance of the community hospital to the wellbeing of the residents, businesses and educational institutions of the Chestertown hospital service area.
Shore Health’s board also is scheduled to decide this spring on a range of other “service delivery” proposals for the three-hospital system. That is, the board will decide where patients will go in the future—to Easton, Dorchester or Chestertown—for various treatments, types of surgery and medical tests.
Town Meeting attendees will be encouraged to sign a petition opposing any plan to discontinue inpatient services in Chestertown, and in support of restoring medical specialty services that the doctors consider appropriate for a community hospital.
“We believe it is unwise, and may in fact be unhealthy to force our seniors and low-income residents to travel, by ambulance or car, 36 to 50 miles to another facility” for care they now get—or used to get—in Chestertown, the doctors’ open setter reads. The letter is entitled, “Make sure our hospital has a future.”
MARY WOOD says
Let us hope the voices of the people who have been living here long before the U. of Md. Regional Health Care took over our hospital, will be listened to.
Jerry M. Smith says
Not only have we lost and are losing impatient service, Chestertown River Hospital emergence service has deteriorate to the point that we will not use it. I’m aware of more than a dozen person who now use out of county emergency service or don’t go in for emergence diagnosis or service.
Jerry Smith
Jerry M. Smith says
Thanks