EVERGREEN HOSPITAL
LETTERS
Evergreen Hospital Medical Center needs help getting a state license for 80 more beds. As a native of this area and long time Eastside resident, businessman and a volunteer community advisor for Evergreen, I have worked to get bonds passed to build and support the hospital. This is my hospital of choice.
The hospital district Evergreen serves, which includes Kirkland, Redmond, parts of Sammamish, Woodinville, Bothell, Kenmore and outlying areas such as Duvall, has experienced terrific growth in recent years.
Our aging population, and I include myself in that constituency, needs more access to health care. Hospital beds should be spread around the Eastside, not concentrated in one area.
We already have the space. Foresighted voters recognized the population boom in the hospital district and in 2004 gave a 66 percent approval rating to the bond to build the bed tower.
With our large service area and growing population, we now need to encourage the Department of Health to get their act together and approve the beds.
In hospital industry language, Evergreen has exceeded the optimal level of bed occupancy and with current growth, will reach crisis levels as early as 2009.
Since Evergreen is publicly funded, we must meet the needs of the community. Without additional licenses, people needing medical care will be turned away.
The additional beds will be funded through patient care revenue and that means no new taxes are required. The majority of the new beds will be set up in patient rooms vacated when the new inpatient tower opened in 2007.
With the space already available and the funding identified, all that is needed for Evergreen to grow to meet our community’s needs is approval from the Department of Health.
I am urging the Washington Department of Health to increase Evergreen Hospital Medical Center’s bed capacity from 227 to 307. A formal request was filed with the Department of Health’s Certificate of Need Office May 9, 2008.
The future is upon us. It is time to build out the available floors and provide hospital services for those who live in our jurisdiction.
Chuck Brockway
Redmond
Apparently Ms. Hyatt didn’t read my letter (Aug. 16 Redmond Reporter) carefully before replying with a letter of her own (Aug. 20 Redmond Reporter).
I am not making light of the serious crime that occurred in Redmond when Joseph Batten killed Melissa Batten.
I wrote that letter to protest the original article wherein the police spokesperson (Jim Bove) was quoted as implying that the murder was a product of love.
I wanted to be sure that there was no such confusion. Joseph Batten killed his wife and himself in a cold-blooded planned murder, not a crime of passion as was suggested.
No love was involved. How she can suggest that I am making light of this crime is hard for me to understand.
I protested the speculation that went on with the discovery of various articles in the trunk of Joseph Batten’s car. Despite Ms. Hyatt’s assertions that “fuzzy handcuffs” are serious abduction tools, I have to say that they are not.
I just can’t believe that a person really interested in kidnapping would use such devices. As my husband said to me, if “fuzzy handcuffs” are so effective, why don’t the police use them?
And I think it is terrible to engage in speculation after such a crime. Joseph Batten is already a murderer, do we have to make him a pervert? What are we doing to other people in his family (yes, even murderers have families) when we do this? Have we no compassion for these innocent people?
I spent many years as a nurse working in county hospitals, and I have seen plenty of domestic violence. To say that I think domestic violence is horrible would be an understatement.
I just don’t see the original article as being “with the program” in terms of exposing domestic violence and it had a very sensationalistic tenor that I found highly distasteful.
I am with Ms. Hyatt in believing that domestic violence is a serious problem.
There is no question in my mind that we need to eliminate domestic violence. I just don’t think that speculation on “what might have happened” with the fuzzy handcuffs, etc., is really going to help anybody, and I think it is wrong to do so.
I still wish that the police spokespeople and the Redmond Reporter would refrain from speculation and not waste their time abusing the reputation of an already dead person.
Ilse Burch
Sammamish
