Thank you Dana Dugan and the Mt. Express for this long looked-for article/ expose with comments.

As a frequent scanner listener / ambulance chaser – call me what you may – it has been clear that something is amiss with the current urgent care system in Hailey, ever since the first St. Lukes shift.

Dozens of times, patients have limped into the Hailey clinic with life-threatening injuries, only to find out in the harshest manner that the clinic is ill equipped / short staffed to handle the crisis.

Once I remember hearing an emergency worker, heroically chasing across the ball field with first aid kit aside, calling into the radio that it would be quicker for him to run over there and then meet up with the 3^rd Ave. ambulance crew, to assist a heart attack victim. It sounded like that patient might have been better off, by hobbling into the fire station in the first place.

Reoccurring incidents like these would be unnecessary, had the promised south valley emergency services been in place, as we were repeatedly assured of in so many pre-St. Luke’s meetings.

Remember a few years back, when the south valley urgent care facility placed an oxymoronic ad in the papers, proclaiming, “Now open for minor Emergencies”?

It is only a minor emergency if it happens to the other person, right?

Injured patients who hobble into the south clinic are sometimes in for a greater shock, when they find they still need transport to St. Lukes. This up-til-now- underreported information is life and death level newsworthy. I was unclear from the article that the county-owned Blaine Manor building is slated for sale. Thank for elaborating on this in your Dec. 28 follow up article:

http://www.mtexpress.com/index2.php?ID=2005118700

Since the building is for sale, are we to presume that this facility will close down after the new one opens? After all the 12/28 article states:

“The new St. Luke's facility will employ 22 people, the same number now employed at Wood River Family Medicine. That includes nine doctors, "mid-levels" such as physicians' assistants, nurses and support staff. The building will have new equipment as well as X-ray and MRI equipment.”

Yet this article says, “When two new doctors join Wood River Family Medicine in 2008 it should help ease the current situation, Barbee said.”

If the same amount of staff is being retained with two new doctors coming aboard, does that that mean there will be some other staff shift occurring? It would be nice if someone associated with the medical facility would jump into this discussion board to elaborate on further, what their intentions are.

I would like to think that no part of the new facility would be short staffed. Perish the thought of physicians trying to offer their best care, when something serious happens like a drunken New Years Eve driver, clipping someone into a minor emergency, only to have the staff find they are once again short-handed and trying to rush their best urgent care. Because as we all know, when you try to rush things, quality often suffers and sometimes with dire consequences.

It hardly seems like there is enough business to support two medical facilities in Hailey. Especially when you consider, it never lasted long here with two music stores, two toy stores, two bookstores, as it is doubtful we will thrive in the South Valley ten years hence, with two airports.

I guess the next question should be, when the new clinic goes in, should they advertise what hours they are open with a large QUALITY URGENT CARE sign on Main St. to drive in injured tourists. Or would that be considered disingenuous? Moreover, if so, what level of emergency care service should they be permitted to claim that they are providing. And who, if anybody, is accountable for overseeing these claims?