Letter: There are still concerns to address

Published 10:10 pm Thursday, July 6, 2017

Last Thursday, my wife and I attended the community forum focused on pending changes to Mayo Clinic Health System in Albert Lea and Austin. We came to listen, to hear directly from those on the panel about the reasons for the changes and the potential impact.

As someone who had questions (and still has questions) about Mayo’s decision, I want to start by thanking those who served on the panel. Thanks especially to Randy Kehr for his moderating and to Dr. Mark Ciota for his honesty. Managing communication in an auditorium filled to overflowing with people experiencing fear and anger is never easy.

We learned some important things at the forum. For one, we learned about the significant losses Mayo Health Systems has been absorbing at the clinics and hospitals in Albert Lea and Austin, losses that amount to over $12 million over the past two years. That is not sustainable. Changes will have to be made to how health care is delivered in this community if we want to have any kind of health care available locally. Keeping things exactly as they are would seem to require us all to pay quite a bit more for health care, probably more than most of us can afford.

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While I feel many questions have been answered, and I am more comfortable with the changes than I was two weeks ago, there are still some concerns Mayo needs to address.

The first is the lack of transparency in decision-making at Mayo. This is not the first time their leaders have made decisions with profound and permanent impact on local communities without involving anyone outside their own circles. I think it would have been both healthier and wiser to include local community leaders, like city and county managers and county public health staff, in those discussions and decisions. Keeping it secret in order to keep it safe is a bad idea when it comes to health care infrastructure.

I’m also disappointed in Mayo’s communication strategy in this decision. If they can’t bring themselves to involve local leaders in the discussions and decisions, those local leaders need to learn about the decisions much earlier than the rest of the community. They need time (at least a couple of days) to begin to come up with plans and strategies that ease the transition and hopefully minimize the consequences. Giving those leaders the first opportunity to ask questions may also have helped Mayo see that they needed to fine tune the plans and make sure to clearly present all the information to the community, not just some of it.

David Behling

Albert Lea