The battle for a new hospital

When reading the article Planners hand back hospital issue to council in the Kearney Hub I was interested to see the varying extremes of opinion on the issue. Many people interviewed in the article are obviously biased due to their positions in the community. Most of the people who were not connected with Good Samaritan Hospital and Catholic Health Initiatives appear to be at least willing to consider the benefits of another hospital in Kearney.

Janice Wiebusch of Kearney was quoted as opposing the new hospital due to its for-profit status and the changing of the land from being zoned for residential development. Of course she is opposed to the hospital; she is a member of the Good Samaritan Hospital Board of Directors. The fact that the land is zoned as residential has no real standing in this debate. Most land that is annexed into a city is at first zoned as a residential area. The city council then goes back later to change the zoning laws to allow development. Another citizen opposed to the hospital mentioned that the building of a hospital would cause the city to lose land that promotes wildlife. How does building a hospital lose any more wildlife space than building a residential neighborhood? If the hospital is not built it will only be a matter of time before new houses are built in the area. Although one house many not take up as much space as a hospital, a large neighborhood does.

One of the biggest arguments against building Kearney Regional Hospital is that it will hurt the quality of health care in central Nebraska. I fail to see how competition can hurt the quality of health care. If anything, the new hospital will force Good Samaritan to provide better service to the community. For-profit hospitals are often condemned for trying to make more money off of their patients, but the truth is that the for-profit status encourages efficiency and usually leads to cheaper health care costs. I think that the city council needs to look carefully at this issue and not allow Catholic Health Initiatives to intimidate them into voting against the hospital. A second hospital may very well be a bad idea for Kearney, but it is not up to the other hospital to make this decision for us.