Penn Highlands Clearfield- Part II

So the middle chunk of my internship has definitely slowed down since my first few week. However there’s still been some excitement going on in the hospital.

Here’s a little background info: 5 years ago, Clearfield Hospital was bought and became part of the Penn Highlands Healthcare system. Had the hospital not been bought it wouldn’t have been able to keep its doors open much longer.

Most of the patients who are seen in the hospital have Medicare/Medicade and the hospital only receives approximately 30 cents of every dollar and the rest of the bill is being written off because the hospital knows the person isn’t going to pay.

Throughout this entire process the hospital has been very open with the public and has informed the public of everything that has been going on via press releases. The biggest shock to the town was the closure of the OB department in the hospital as less than 200 babies were being delivered every year and it wasn’t a department the hospital could afford to keep open.

What’s happening now: There’s a group of 3 women who volunteer in the hospital who call themselves ‘the concerned citizens.’ Without first contacting the hospital they have organized a town meeting to be held at the courthouse. This meeting has been called “Save the Hospital” and the bottom of their post says “Expect the Unexpected.” These women have also been mailing anonymous letters to people in the town as well as doctors inviting them to go; funny thing is they put one of the lady’s phone number on the letter and it wasn’t hard to figure out who the other two ladies were.

The hospital was not contacted throughout the time that the letters and posters were distributed all over Clearfield. The week of the actual town meeting there were also several letters to the editor in the local newspaper about how bad the hospital has become and for everyone to attend the meeting.

The hospital knew that we were going to get slammed because we did not attend the meeting. But they did not attend because 1. The ladies in charge were told several times everything that has been going on by the president himself 2. We were not officially invited or told about the meeting 3. The hospital did not agree with how the meeting was organized. Had the citizens gone to the hospital asking them to hold an open forum about what’s been happening that would have been awesome and the hospital would have done that.

The hospital was contacted by the local paper and offered to have a story published beside the one of the town meeting. However the hospital declined and because no one was going to the meeting the hospital opted to have a response article run the next day in order to allow the hospital to form a thoughtful response.

This is the quick version of everything that happened. Although it’s unfortunate that this had to happen, I’m thankful that I got to experience the PR side of it. I learned about responding to negative media attention. Also, I was taught about how to create talking points in case the hospital was contacted by the media such as a T.V. station. This consumed a lot of time at the hospital as it was all everyone could talk about for a while.

Something else I go to do during this time was take a day and go to DuBois to work with the graphic designer on a brochure. I created all of the copy and designed the brochure by myself and then the graphic designer helped me to put everything to together and edit on the computer system they have. It was a lot of fun. I enjoyed getting to do something different for the day. We had a few hundred copies of the brochure I made created and they will be distrusted at a local festival to promote a new location that the hospital has opening.