Letter to the editor

Dear Editor,

In prayerfully considering this letter, I’ve tried really hard to remove my personal feelings from the situation occurring at Dahl Memorial Healthcare right now. However, I’ve concluded that it’s impossible to remove emotion while saying what needs to be said completely. I’m a person, after all, and I care deeply for the members of this community…this community that has welcomed me in so beautifully.

We, as a community, have been wronged by the leadership at Dahl Memorial. The current administration and many members of our board have lied to and failed to show transparency, when asked for, to the association members. I came across a quote recently that spurred me in the direction of writing this letter. “You can’t leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution.” Tyree Scott. Read that again and let it permeate a bit.

A select few employees at DMHA will say that staff morale is fine, and those few happen to be in the good graces of the interim administrator, at least for now. An overwhelming majority of both patients and staff members who have spoken to me regarding the issues at DMHA have shared the impersonal care, dark energy, and lack of joy that is found there. Countless people in this community are actively avoiding services at DMHA and that is a problem. We have staff members with families who have purchased homes here to settle down, and they are being replaced faster than they’ve been uprooted from their positions at DMHA.

This is not a metro-area hospital. This is a Critical Access Hospital, Rural Health Clinic, and Long-Term Care Facility and it deserves to be operated as such. A business like this in a small town takes people working hard. Several hard-working people devoted hours, days, and weeks to convince this community that the new building was needed…that it was a good idea…and that it would not be managed by contracted staff with no interest in Carter County.

We all know there’s a problem. We all want the solution – we cannot continue to leave the solution in the hands of those who generated the problem.

Sincerely,

Libby Barth

Ekalaka