Letter: TCH misses the boat on supporting Trios

Against the backdrop of the current unusually severe influenza season and the accompanying loss of life in our local community, the TCH editorial board offered up an uncritical opinion piece in support of Trios Health. While there may be something to be said for civic boosterism, the editorial exhorted Tri-City residents to blindly support Trios regardless of the extent of their fiscal irresponsibility.

The editorial conflates the need of a population base as large as the Tri-Cities for multiple financially healthy hospital systems with the need to support Trios. They are not one and the same. Two of the community’s hospitals appear to have operated over the past several decades in a financially stable manner. The third is in Chapter 9 bankruptcy due to it’s insistence on building a new hospital and medical office building despite bond levies to finance the construction twice being turned down by the voters.

The TCH editorial board seems to have accepted without question the assurances of Craig Cudworth of Quorum Health Resources, a consulting firm, that continuing cuts in Trios staff will have no affect on the quality of care. A number of news articles dealing with cuts in Trios staff goes back years.

This story was originally published January 30, 2018 at 3:17 PM with the headline "Letter: TCH misses the boat on supporting Trios."