Franciscan Healthcare has made the decision to demolish St. Margaret's Hospital in Hammond due to non-profitability and the high cost of maintaining it. This while they have recently converted their clinic in Munster to a limited-bed hospital, and within a few miles of the massive facilities at Community Hospital and St. Margaret South in Dyer.
It seems to be a strange decision after we have been hearing for two years about the lack of beds available for patients because of the COVID pandemic. And it is going to add length-time for ambulance patients to get triage care, critical to recovery or even survival.
Would it be that much more expensive for Franciscan to build a triage clinic in Hammond to separate more critical cases from those who could follow up later with a doctor? Remember, we don't have a public transportation service in Hammond, the seventh most populous city in Indiana with 77,000 residents.
Leon Gamino, Hammond
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