Tell the truth; try to have integrity, dignity

Dear Editor,
I am writing this to hopefully enlighten people to what has failed in our community and how to bring us back together.
I was watching Dr. Malone’s speech he gave at the peoples convoy Saturday. He gave three keywords that I feel is very important.
The first is integrity. Don’t lie, don’t twist the truth. Do you are Hospital boards and administration have integrity? They have kept a lot of information from the public. You decide.
The next is dignity. Do they have dignity when they attack the press as they did at the last health board meeting? You decide.
The last is community. Have they kept the community involved in the decision-making of the merger with Mercy? They say they have, but have they really? There are a lot of concern citizens that question how they have gone about reaching the decision they have made. These people need to be held accountable for their actions and decisions.

One of the concerns a lot of citizens have with the merger with Mercy is that PCMH Will just become a steppingstone for another merger with the hospitals in Cape Girardeau. If that happens, will our local community hospital and it’s employees still have their local autonomy. Will the hospital employees still have their jobs or will they be disposed of and services outsourced to a larger corporation. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of being stepped on, and seeing the working class is wealth transferred to the wealthy.
The citizens of Perry County need to be engaged and involved if we want to keep our healthcare local, not out sourced to a larger corporation!

Sincerely,
Brenda Thurm Hopfer
Retired RN
Perryville