The secrecy surrounding the negotiations over privatization of most of Washington County\u2019s Public Health Department continued Thursday through hours of closed-door chatter that resulted in no resolutions.<\/p>\n
The county Board of Supervisors Finance Committee spent about three hours in a closed-door meeting, debating a proposal from Fort Hudson Health Systems to buy the county\u2019s home health care, hospice and long-term care programs, which make up the lion\u2019s share of the Public Health Department.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Obviously, the counties and non-profits that provide these services are under severe budget pressure to make changes quickly, in large part due to lagging Medicaid reimbursements from Albany.<\/p>\n
And I don’t doubt that everyone is working in good faith to make this transition work.<\/p>\n
But I wonder whether this process — secretive in some cases, balkanized in others, and sometimes simply rushed — has allowed the various players in the public healthcare system to coordinate the way these crucial services will be provided, within counties and across the region.<\/p>\n
As more of these services are privatized, are there plans in place for what happens when companies stop taking some low-income patients (as more and more health care providers are doing), or when firms go out of business, or choose to leave our area?<\/p>\n
What happens if one nursing home or home health program shuts down, or downsizes?\u00a0 How does that affect neighboring programs?<\/p>\n
These aren’t abstract questions.\u00a0 These are the questions that families will be facing in the months ahead, as health care systems that have been run by their local governments for decades begin to change rapidly.<\/p>\n
It strikes me as odd that we debate and review some things for years — say, the proposed resort in Tupper Lake — while other things, such as the healthcare provided to thousands of our residents can change so rapidly with so little public discussion.<\/p>\n
As always, your comments welcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As the discussion over providing health care programs, and long-term care for low-income seniors, moves […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[6548,4803,20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6106"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6106"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6108,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6106\/revisions\/6108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}