I’ve been too busy to cover these, but the three most important races to progressives in the primary appear to me to be Debra Shore, John Sullivan, and Forrest Claypool.
One question in comments when I mentioned the Claypool campaign was whether he supported the county hospital system or not. As with both Sullivan and Shore, life has kept me busy, but I think this race is what can save the county hospitals.
The claim from Stroger is that Claypool wants to destroy the hospitals by reducing their staff. The reality is that Claypool wants to consolidate non-medical personnel into one staff that can serve all of the hospitials.
It’s heart breaking to hear that hospitals are going to have cuts in staffing. The image it evokes is fewer doctors and fewer nursers. Cook County’s hospitals are in tough shape so that may happen too, but the best way to avoid it isn’t to ignore the bureaucratic problems, it is to take them head on. One of the most basic problems is that the administrative positions are duplicated at each hospital. Claypool has been attacked for wanting to consolidate those positions. The reality is that Claypool’s ideas are likely to result in the county hospitals better able to keep medical personnel employed, while there will be reductions in adminstrative positions that don’t impact patient care.
I’m realistic enough to understand the tough position that the hospitals are in, may mean a reduction in personnel across the board, but any such reduction should start with administrative personnel that are not involved in patient care. Stroger’s basing his claim on reduced personnel on the loss of essentially patronage jobs. That sucks for him, but it’s damn good for the people seeking treatment.
Another race I wished I’d spent more time on…
People need Healthcare, not Hospitals. Hospitals are the places you end up in when you’ve had long years of bad healthcare.
Better the new one had never been built in the first place and the money invested in decent primary care clinics and then contract the hospitalization.
The place is jammed up now with queues of people waiting who shouldn’t be going to a hospital in the first place.
Stroger’s created a real mess by using a mid 20th century model of healthcare delivery.
Claypool at least seems to grasp that and taking the steps to starting to reform this elephant county’s recreated.
One of the things that Claypool will have to do is check the credentials of the existing staff to see whether those individuals would even get an interview at a private hospital.
Now that the qualified technicians see some hope of a change, I’m hearing horrifying stories. The last one was from a woman with a 4-year degree who joined a medical unit only to discover her colleagues’ credentials consist of a 4-week [sic] course. The published job requirements apparently do not apply to internal transfers…..with personal connections.
I donate blood regularly and recently, for the first time ever, had a medical problem. Now I keep wondering: What would have happened if the blood bank staffers total training consisted of a 4-week class.
A here, here for Deb Shore — about time we got someone at MWRD who is actually concerned about the water overall instead of simply what to do with it…