Letters to the Editor - The Lakeville Journal - 4-7-22

Strength in hospital’s changes

I write today in support of Sharon Hospital’s proposed consolidation of critical care services into a progressive care unit (PCU). I have been a physician practicing internal medicine, hospital medicine, and hospice and palliative medicine in the Sharon Hospital community for nearly 23 years. Over that period, I have witnessed, firsthand, dramatic changes in America’s healthcare system.

When I arrived at Sharon hospital in 1999, we had a very busy intensive care unit. This was one of the reasons I chose to relocate to this community. I enjoyed working in critical care, especially in procedural medicine. Although I was never board certified in critical care, I spent much of my residency training in critical care units and as chief resident I spent three months as ICU attending physician at Jacobi medical Center of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. I felt capable of caring for critically ill patients at Sharon hospital with the support of our local teams.

Over the years, however, standards of care have changed and now it is most appropriate for critically ill patients to be cared for by board certified critical care physicians.  In addition, the physical facilities required to care for critically ill patients have evolved and these standards have changed as well.  Our hospital is well equipped to care for most ill medical and surgical patients, and even some critically ill patients.  For those patients requiring a higher level of intensive care, we will continue, as we have, to transfer those patients to the most appropriate healthcare facility.

We used this approach successfully during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Nuvance Health’s hospitals shared resources and moved patients around the system to facilities that could best serve them. We selected Danbury Hospital and Vassar Brothers Medical Center to cohort severe COVID patients requiring highly specialized care. In exchange, other system hospitals, including Sharon Hospital, received non-COVID patients, COVID patients of lower acuity and, unfortunately, those not expected to survive who received compassionate end-of-life care.

Sharon Hospital’s proposed PCU will allow us to maintain our current level of clinical services, with increased coordination and efficiency. Maintaining all patients on a single unit will increase synergy, which will benefit patient care and reduce practitioner burnout as we continue facing a national exodus of professionals from the healthcare system.   We expect this change will boost recruitment and retention of competitive positions. The unit will also be modern and well-equipped, allowing us to better utilize space and resources to offer advanced progressive care services, including short-term mechanical ventilation and continuous cardiac monitoring while also maintaining our ability to stabilize and transfer patients needing more advanced care.

The proposed PCU at Sharon Hospital is one example demonstrating how we can adapt to the changing healthcare landscape, while remaining strong in serving our community. This consolidation will help Sharon Hospital maintain its strength and grow as a vibrant community hospital. I urge the community to continue visiting www.nuvancehealth.org/sharonhospitaltransformation for accurate, up-to-date information regarding Sharon’s Hospital transformation.

Mark J. Marshall, DO, MA, FACP, FHM

Vice President of Medical Affairs, Sharon Hospital

Sharon

Cartoon to the Editor here.

Reality or fantasy?

Although Mark Godburn cautions us against harping on Trump in his March 24 letter, “Collusion, fake news and more from the left,” there’s one thing that we should all of us remember about the ex-president, which is that his commitment to a reality-based version of events was always tenuous.

The little lies he told, back in January 2017, about the size of the crowds at his inauguration, lies that a White House advisor waved away as “alternative facts,” set the tone for a cascade of distortion and misinformation that lasted four years. Trump embraced the post-truth moment with a vengeance.

More troubling, now that Trump is back on the sidelines, is that an important segment of the American people has followed his lead. A lie, if repeated often enough, loudly enough, and by enough people, begins to take on much of the weight of truth—and it can certainly be wielded to good effect in a political argument.

That’s why Mark Godburn has done a useful thing in sending to paper the arguments that the right has used to justify Trump and vilify the left. They will be on record. When The Lakeville Journal unpacks them in 25 years for its “Turning Back the Pages” column, it will be clear which version of the Trump years was based on political animus and which on a sober sifting of the evidence. I have my hunch.

Interesting to me is that Mark Godburn accurately describes the scheme that led to Trump’s first impeachment: wanting to trade aid to Ukraine for dirt on Joe Biden. He doesn’t deny it, and he doesn’t say it’s OK. But he moves past it by accusing Biden of carrying out a similar scheme as vice president. The left, of course, would point out that a president shouldn’t use foreign aid to expedite a domestic political errand. And that Joe Biden, fond father though he is, was acting to further U.S. and NATO foreign policy goals in Ukraine. But let’s not imagine we’ll settle the question here.

In 25 years (this is a thought experiment we can carry out now) either the New York Times will have produced the more accurate first draft of history or Fox and its allies. It would surprise me if historians did not find the pages of The Times to contain a fairly serviceable account of what actually happened during the Trump years, while Fox would be useful to them mainly as a source of political diatribe. Both have their uses. But one shouldn’t be confused with the other.

Willard Wood

Norfolk

Vituperative letter

Your March 24 edition of The Lakeville Journal contained a letter to the editor, which in turn contained a “jump” or continuation on another page. Without looking at the other page I knew the author, he of the vituperative letter.

Perhaps Fox News has him on retainer. No doubt my letter will get him lathered up with a response. Ramble away old sport, you have the right.

Craig Toensing

Falls Village

Writer should practice what he preaches

The title of Joe Geraghty’s March 31 letter was “Less vitriol, more virtue, please.”

If only he practiced that himself. Unfortunately, he doesn’t.

Mr. Geraghty called my March 24 letter “unsubstantiated opinions that echo the latest biased sound bite from someone’s favorite media outlet.”

That’s entirely false. Mr. Geraghty was simply stereotyping what I wrote with the vitriol and speculation he claims he wants to stop. He didn’t even attempt to answer my letter’s points about Russia collusion and Hunter Biden’s laptop.

The laptop story was recently addressed by liberal commentator Bill Maher. He correctly noted that the story was purposely buried. “It was coming out during the height of the election in 2020,” Maher said. “And they [liberal press and big tech] did not want that out in the mainstream.”

That’s no echo-chamber sound bite, Mr. Geraghty, but a top liberal voice acknowledging the obvious election coverage manipulation by liberal media and big tech.

As for my statement about Joe Biden’s culpability for today’s problems, Mr. Geraghty’s only defense was that those problems aren’t entirely Joe’s fault.

What’s undeniably Joe’s fault is that he has made many problems worse. As President Obama said, never underestimate Joe’s ability to mess things up.

Biden’s actions caused a massive, ongoing deluge of illegal border crossings. He pushed far too much stimulus, flooding the economy and contributing greatly to the worst inflation in decades.

He conducted the Afghanistan evacuation backwards, removing troops and closing bases before civilians were evacuated. Then when the country was overrun, he had to bring troops back for dangerous rescue efforts and implore the Taliban to help. The result was chaos, death and huge stocks of U.S. weapons falling into Taliban hands. Biden even lied about what his generals told him.

Energy prices soared under Biden’s stewardship, long before the Russia-Ukraine War. Biden just blames Putin and hopes totalitarian countries will ramp up their oil production for us.

Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris, is a disaster. Her team is quitting in droves. Communication between her staff and Biden’s is awful — and these Democrats were supposed to be the professionals coming in after Trump’s amateurs.

Biden is fortunate that 80% of the news media are liberals who sandpaper his constant gaffes, blunders and lies, or his approval rating would be even lower than it is.

Criticism of Trump and the GOP has been at screaming point for years, including in The Lakeville Journal. Did Mr. Geraghty ever say it wasn’t all Trump’s fault and we should be more civil there too?

Or is it only now, with Biden taking the heat, that Mr. Geraghty laments, “How about less vitriol and more virtue in our conversations?”

Yeah, how about it?

Mark Godburn

Norfolk