Westfield’s ER “is strategically located in an area that has no other hospital coverage, closing it could and will result in the loss of life,”observes Chautauqua County Sheriff. The sheriff is one of many public officials, volunteer EMTs, former patients and others who tell stories of the life-important ER in Westfield, New York. In 2007, Westfield Memorial Hospital was shut down. It was not a business decision, nor a decision that took into consideration the wishes of the people of Chautauqua County. It was a political decision. SO HOW COULD A PEOPLE NOT BE UPSET AND EXPECT THE WORST WHEN THIS SAME BERGER COMMISSION SAYS WE JUST MIGHT SHUT DOWN YOUR ER IN 2010? Outrageous! We hear also from State Assemblyman William Parment, Couny Executive Greg Edwards, Westfield Mayor David Carr and others including Burl Swanson, Melody Edwards, Roger Testrake, Tina Newel, Martha Bills and Beebe Eggert.
With all the public hoopla about Health Care in the news, here’s a behind-the-scenes Kafkaesque story (a story common in the US and Canada). The State can just shut down a town, a village, a rural people: take away their ER, a vibrant institution that some 30,000 people, in an area of over a thousand square miles, rely on. NY State shut down Westfield’s hospital in 2007 and now threatens to close the ER. The reason? Saving State money is not the reason. One has to wonder, what is? the agenda?