Let’s see how much our community values our Hospital?
Westfield Memorial Hospital is once more having to justify to the Department of Health its value to the community it serves. New York State Dept of Health is now threatening to close the hospital’s Emergency Room when the transitional designation the hospital is currently operating under terminates in June 2010. If this happens the current volunteer Emergency Service viability also will be under question. How many of our volunteer EMT’s will be able to spend the time from their other duties to transport cases to Dunkirk or Jamestown? What will that then do to our volunteer Fire service?
Many of us who have been here long enough remember when Welch’s pulled out their head office, at that time its significance and impact on the community perhaps was not realized by the majority of residents of Westfield and therefore we were not as vocal or demonstrative in fighting the change as we should have been, I include myself in this catagory. The impact of the change at the Hospital could be equally as devastating and therefore this time we must make our voices heard by our elected politicians in Albany.
You now have the opportunity with the benefit of our current technology to tell Albany what you think by visiting www.WMHsaveslives.org, and demonstrate to them that rural communities like ours need access to emergency care just like the bigger cities, we matter just as much, if one of us dies because we can’t get quick emergency care it matters just as much as if it was someone in Buffalo or downstate.
Let us show our politicians that small communities like ours are a force to be reckoned with.
