Sharon Hospital’s dilemma

The complexities of running rural businesses of any kind are legion. With medical facilities like hospitals the problems are only made worse by the need to provide such a wide range of services that it can become next to impossible to choose what is most needed by their patients.

Depending on the time of life, needs change dramatically. Does that seem too simplistic? Or obvious? Until you live it, it’s hard to explain why those services are key at any given moment. Your child broke their wrist playing baseball? The Emergency Department becomes crucial and irreplaceable. Your mother needs a knee replacement, and she really wants to do it close to home if she’s going to do it at all? The orthopedic physicians are the most important to your family at that moment.

The problem with trying to meet all needs is that it becomes very expensive. And that is the argument Nuvance and Sharon Hospital use in defending their plans to close Labor and Delivery and change the makeup and name of the Intensive Care Unit. Yet when those departments are needed, those who use them cannot find another approach to the medical care they need very easily.

This is why the physicians at the hospital, and the group Save Sharon Hospital, are making their voices heard at past and upcoming meetings and demonstrations. Their concerns must be heard and addressed by the hospital’s administration and ownership in order for medical care to be seen as accessible in the region, for those who live both across the line in New York and in the Northwest Corner.

Because if potential clients for the hospital believe it hasn’t heard them, and won’t fulfill their needs when they become urgent, they will surely make solid plans to get their health care elsewhere. That would put the long-term viability of the hospital in question, making its eventual diminishing a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Right now, the hospital has multiple services that do meet the needs of people in the region who need medical care. (See story, front page, by Debra Aleksinas.) It will be a balancing act for the administrators at Sharon Hospital and Nuvance (as well as the state compliance agencies) to decide what the formula should be to best serve their population, and ensure the longevity of the hospital. There are no guarantees; many rural hospitals across the country have greatly reduced their services or closed altogether, after all.

But these decisions should be made considering the advice and requests of the physicians and the consumers — that is, the rest of us who aren’t medical professionals but need their care.  Without firm acknowledgment that these concerns must be taken seriously, there is the chance that the hospital won’t be able to serve its population’s needs no matter what departments it tries to keep open.

Latest News

All are welcome at The Mahaiwe

Paquito D’Rivera performs at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington on April 5.

Geandy Pavon

Natalia Bernal is the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center’s education and community engagement manager and is, in her own words, “the one who makes sure that Mahaiwe events are accessible to all.”

The Mahaiwe’s community engagement program is rooted in the belief that the performing arts should be for everyone. “We are committed to establishing and growing partnerships with neighboring community and arts organizations to develop pathways for overcoming social and practical barriers,” Bernal explained. “Immigrants, people of color, communities with low income, those who have traditionally been underserved in the performing arts, should feel welcomed at the Mahaiwe.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Living with the things you love:
a conversation with Mary Randolph Carter
Mary Randolph Carter teaches us to surround ourselves with what matters to live happily ever after.
Carter Berg

There is magic in a home filled with the things we love, and Mary Randolph Carter, affectionately known as “Carter,” has spent a lifetime embracing that magic. Her latest book, “Live with the Things You Love … and You’ll Live Happily Ever After,” is about storytelling, joy, and honoring life’s poetry through the objects we keep.

“This is my tenth book,” Carter said. “At the root of each is my love of collecting, the thrill of the hunt, and living surrounded by things that conjure up family, friends, and memories.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Beloved classic film ‘The Red Shoes’ comes to the big screen for Triplex benefit
Provided

On Saturday, April 5, at 3 p.m., The Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington and Jacob’s Pillow, the dance festival in Becket, Massachusetts, are presenting a special benefit screening of the cinematic masterpiece, “The Red Shoes,” followed by a discussion and Q&A. Featuring guest speakers Norton Owen, director of preservation at Jacob’s Pillow, and dance historian Lynn Garafola, the event is a fundraiser for The Triplex.

“We’re pitching in, as it were, because we like to help our neighbors,” said Norton. “They (The Triplex) approached us with the idea, wanting some input if they were going to do a dance film. I thought of Lynn as the perfect person also to include in this because of her knowledge of The Ballets Russes and the book that she wrote about Diaghilev. There is so much in this film, even though it’s fictional, that derives from the Ballets Russes.” Garafola, the leading expert on the Ballets Russes under Serge Diaghilev, 1909–1929, the most influential company in twentieth-century theatrical dance, said, “We see glimpses of that Russian émigré tradition, performances we don’t see much of today. The film captures the artifice of ballet, from the behind-the-scenes world of dressers and conductors to the sheer passion of the audience.”

Keep ReadingShow less