Letter: Health, not money, should be the focus

Re: International film fest returns to SBC, Free Lance, April 4, 2025

If I could I would make a film about our hospital from the last century to this one for the Poppy Jasper Film Festival. The film might begin with a horse-drawn cart ramble to a hospital to remove a hot puss-laden appendix. If someone lost consciousness, shattered a leg or had a high fever the doctor came for a home visit.  

Babies not born in a hospital could result in maternal hemorrhage, infection or death resulting in difficult infant survival. Before the polio vaccine, paralyzed children and grownups needed care in a hospital just to be able to breathe.  

Vaccines and antibiotics now keep many away from hospitals.

Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital survived, relocated and grew with a growing community. With dedicated nurses and doctors, our hospital continues to serve our community in a quiet, unassuming and professional manner. Patients welcome a chance to health and survival.

The problem seems to be a money-sickness of the hospital board. This profit-hungry board thinks that sickness should generate money. The problem is that we all get sick or have an accident and need a hospital.  

Providing health is a service. We like to think that we are born to be healthy until we die. The reality is that the medical community keeps us healthy and comfortable until we die. 

Documentary evidence demonstrates that selling a hospital is the best way to kill a hospital. It seems that this CEO, Mary Casillas, has one obsessive unchanging mindset, which is to sell the hospital.  

But we, the people, think otherwise. Actually, the hospital generates surplus funds, but the board members, except for Dr. Gabriel, think that healthcare should make more money. Money is a distraction; healthcare should be the focus!

For the third time the federal judge has refused the petition of the board to file bankruptcy. The judge advised the board, “Do your job!”  

Evidence shows that the CEO and the board are NOT doing their job. If this information became a film, this good hospital would become a star!

Mary Zanger

Hollister