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Letter: New Rifle care center

Soon voters in the Rifle hospital district will receive ballots in the mail in which they will have the choice to vote to build a new care center in Rifle and to expand our hospital. As a concerned citizen and family member of a resident at the E. Dene Moore Care Center, I have found out some things: The staff is wonderful to the residents, caring and kind, offering many varied activities to keep them as active as possible, physically and socially. The nursing care and therapy they offer are great. The staff are winners of several national awards for excellence.

But the building is old and inadequate and needs to be replaced. The heating, air conditioning and plumbing are antiquated. Most rooms are double occupancy, meaning a resident must share a sink and set of plastic drawers for toiletries with another person and a toilet with three other people.

Someone who is very ill, possibly in their final hours of life, may be only a curtain away from someone who is relatively healthy but unable to live at home.

Is this what we want for our parents and elderly or handicapped friends and for ourselves if we need rehab services? No. Single rooms for privacy and for the control of infection are what the proposed new care center would provide.

Our present care center is having to turn away patients every week. The care center needs to be expanded and it will be, if the ballot passes. If it doesn’t, the care center will be forced to close. This is unacceptable.

The size of our hospital is also inadequate. Oftentimes patients are forced to go out of town because there are only 12 inpatient beds. Our hospital in recent years has added services and specialists, but these services require more space, which the expansion will provide.

Consider this: It may be your family member or even you who may need the nursing home for rehab or long-term care or who will need to spend a night in the hospital.

Please join me in voting yes on issue 4A.

Judy Green

Rifle

 


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