Firstly, why are we footing the entire bill for a facility that will belong entirely to Centura Health? The origins of the project came from Centura’s development department, not from the people of Durango and its surroundings. Do the people of Durango actually know what they’re paying for and why?

Second, where is the data to support building such a facility in the first place? The need does arise to admit a hospice patient to an in-patient facility, but how often? Is the need sufficient to warrant this new $5 million building that we’re paying for?

Third, who will get to use this facility? It was announced at the event that in order to make the new facility economically feasible, the eight beds and deluxe accommodations would be filled by regular hospital patients as well as by hospice patients.

This means that Mercy-Centura will fill those beds with mostly non-hospice patients, at their discretion. Plus there’s the question of which hospice patients will even have access to this facility? Hospice care is meant to be available to every citizen regardless of their financial status or insurance coverage. That will most certainly not be the case here. In-patient hospice care is not covered by typical health insurance, Medicare or Medicaid, so the new facility will be available only to those who can pay for it out of pocket or have purchased special long-term care insurance.

Hospice care is community care – and needs to be transparent and accountable to the community it serves. But that seems far from the case here. We should demand to know the answers to these questions before it’s too late to bother asking.

Rich Alan

Durango