Community meeting set to discuss Bath Community Hospital
A community meeting regarding the future of Bath Community Hospital and it’s medical staff has been scheduled for Tuesday night.
Recently four doctors submitted their resignations to the hospital. The doctors had concerns with administration following the hospital board’s decision to not renew the contract of Dr. James Redington. Dr. Redington has worked in Bath County for twenty six years. He left work immediately when given ninety days notice that his contract would not be renewed. The other four doctors all gave ninety days notice with their resignations. Two of those doctors are full time at the hospital and the other two work part time.
Jeff Grimm of Millboro helped organize the community meeting.
“I’m hoping that members of the board of directors of the hospital and the administration at the hospital will be in attendance so they can hear first hand,” says Grimm. “And, listen, if you’re happy with what’s happened and the fact that Dr. Redington is not there or you’re happy with the way things are going, I encourage you to come out. Because I think it needs to be a very open meeting where if you’re happy with what’s happened, let administration and let the board of directors know. If you’re not happy, I encourage you to come out and let them know. I think this needs to be a very honest and open forum where you can let everybody know where you stand.”
Carl Chestnut of Mitchelltown is also helping to organize the meeting.
“We’re having this meeting, a calm meeting, to let people know what’s going on at the hospital,” says Chestnut. “We want to find out what their concern is and let them know why we are having the meeting. We’re having the meeting because we want our hospital back. We want our community hospital back, our community doctors back. We’re concerned about Dr. Redington. He is a great doctor and we want him back to work. The other doctors we have, we don’t have local doctors. Dr. Redingon is a local person with a family that lives here. And the other doctors we’ve got are part time, that are just here a few days a week. They are great doctors, I know a couple of them, they are great, great doctors. Dr. Bost is one, there’s lots of them. But we need a doctor that we can see. And we want these people to be able, in a calm way, to express themselves and talk and ask questions so we can answer them, if we can, and we want to get to the bottom of this.”
“I spoke with Asher Brand, the emergency room doctor that works at the hospital but that resigned, and Asher’s very well spoken and has a level head and he agreed to moderate that meeting,” says Grimm. “And I’ve known Asher for years upon years with my involvement with the rescue squad. And I actually spoke to Asher about what this was going to do to EMS services in the county, and how this could affect EMS services, so we had a conversation about that also.”
The community meeting regarding Bath Community Hospital and it’s medical staff is Tuesday night, October 28th, at 7 in the auditorium at Bath County High School.
For more information call 540- 839-5254.
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