Kudos to all involved in Monday’s meeting about the status of integration of Rainy Lake Medical Center and Essentia Health.
It’s clear that members of the hospital board have the best interests of health care in our community at the base of their involvement.
While the complex issue has lent itself to rumors, fears and frustration, the presentation provided information about what’s happening within the medical community.
And we applaud Essentia and RLMC officials for understanding the need to provide information to the community as the process unfolds. Quarterly updates pledged by the officials should help the community stay informed and involved.
We look forward to implementation of the action plan, with short-term and long-term goals, outlined at Monday’s presentation. Accomplishing these goals will go a long way toward establishing trust that could lead to improving the health care offerings in our community.
Clearly, ours is not the only community facing challenges in establishing a healthy future for its health facilities. Concerns about changing reimbursement formulas play a role, and nationwide, rural areas have increasing difficulties in recruiting and retaining doctors.
Health care plays a critical role in a community and we must all do what we can to ensure that our facilities continue to have a healthy, stable customer base that allows these facilities to add and improve services.
Full integration with Essentia may be the answer to accessing additional resources that improve the offerings here. But we must rely on the input of local board members to ensure that this process retains the local control needed to make it the right choice for Borderland.
