As you may or may not know, Bay Medical Center in Panama City, FL is about to enter into a sale/lease agreement with Sacred Heart. This means indigent care will end in 2-5 years, but then the hospital will probably sell BMC or continue with a 40 year lease, where it will be absorbed by Sacred Heart and remain a private, for-profit hospital with strict adherence to Roman Catholic ideology as to patient care. It will no longer be a non-profit, special district hospital for all people, insured, underinsured or indigent.
This will affect YOU. You may be turned away. The only other hospital in Bay County is Gulf Coast, a smaller, private, for profit hospital.
There are two hearings and if you have used the services of BMC, you should be there. The County Commission will hear from the public on February 15 and 16, in the Government Center complex on 11th Street in Panama City, at 6 p.m.
Bring your questions and your suggestions. The current administration apparently ran it into the ground with poor financial decisions.
The News Herald and the County Press have covered this shameful state of affairs for our hospital, but the County Press did an expose' in two parts by Rosalie Schaeffer that is really good.
Please consider coming to the meetings on both nights. We must not let our hospital slip through our fingers. The Bay County Commission Chairman is George Gainer. He is vehemently against being rushed into this decision, but the rest of the Commissioners need to know how you feel. They are either on the fence or for the "deal".
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