Robert Gardner: Closing Gifford Medical Center would deeply damage the region

This commentary is by Robert Gardner of Rochester. He is a retired television journalist.

The radical and ill-conceived proposal to close Gifford Medical Center as part of an overall plan to reduce health care costs in Vermont reminds me of a good friend who was suffering from cancer and was given very aggressive chemotherapy. He was cured of the cancer, but the chemotherapy killed him.

The small towns of Vermont, the foundation of Vermont’s deep character and charm, are complex and fragile, their social fabric made up of the poor and the privileged, the traditions of their agricultural past, and the challenges of rapidly changing demographics and social change. They do not fit easily into a desire for efficiency or sensible square corners. They are complicated. They are vulnerable.

But these little communities are held together by the social institutions that provide the common good — the schools, the fire departments, the libraries, the hospitals. Remove one and a dangerous void is left, the whole is weakened. With the primary driver of many of Vermont’s problems being population decline, it is a self-defeating idea. Why would anybody move to a town with no school, no fire department, no library, or no hospital? Remove the supporting pillars of the town’s social architecture, and they will fade.

I am a 77-year-old man with heart disease, high blood pressure and the terminal condition of aging. Since moving to Vermont 10 years ago, I have received primary care from Gifford as well as care in neurology and orthopedics. I received emergency abdominal surgery at Gifford, surgery which saved my life. I also regularly use the Gifford clinic here in the town of Rochester for routine medical issues and vaccinations.

So at the citizen level, I am very familiar with the quality of care that Gifford provides to our fairly remote rural town and how essential it is to the flourishing of the region. I cannot overstate the importance of this hospital, not simply for my own medical care, but to the fabric of the community itself, its property values, and its social vitality. 

It is a surprise to no one that Vermont’s population has declined and that our population is aging. It is a surprise to no one that health care costs in America are spiraling out of control. That these are serious challenges to the state of Vermont is quite clear. But I do not see how the wrecking-ball strategy of closing essential services can keep from deeply damaging the region that depends on them.

I carefully studied the report recommending closing Gifford (from Oliver Wyman, the state’s outside management consulting firm) and struggled through its dense and bureaucratic language to try to find a clear understanding of the rationale and methodology behind the radical suggestion that this little group of isolated rural towns in central Vermont should lose their hospital.

Here is the sentence that was offered to explain the purpose of the report:

“Document and socialize confirmed current state understanding, designed future state, and recommended steps to achieve future state (including pros and cons).”

I can’t even tell you what that sentence means. The decision to close Gifford would have genuine human and social costs, impacting people’s lives in ways that are absent in the bloodless language of this consultant’s superficial analysis. Vermont is a state whose very foundation is the web of its human communities, families living through difficult winters, neighbors helping neighbors, a warm hand in difficult times. They deserve better than this.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Robert Gardner: Closing Gifford Medical Center would deeply damage the region.