Enlightened Interdependence

Hospital trustees considering a merger or other affiliation should ask themselves if they are treating a short-term problem with a long-term solution.

In the din of experts' predicting the decline and fall of the independent community hospital, trustees may feel obliged to prescribe medicine that causes more harm than the illness itself, even to the point of removing a precious asset from the community or changing its character forever. On the other hand, a decision to affiliate may actually avoid the loss of the community's precious health care asset.