Hospital rescue

Dear Editor: I wish to thank Larry Zimmer for his comments on PIH Downey. (“Hospital Service,” Letters to the Editor, 1/29/15). Let me tell you a story.

We were dying out here a few years ago. We could not meet payroll. We were about to die out here. When Martin Luther closed, there was nobody to pick up the pieces for a healthcare system going down fast. Our emergency rooms were full we had no place to put all those people But yet we survived with the help of the people out here at Downey Community Hospital.

Our nurses came in to help this hospital survive. We were going down fast. We begged the state to not close us, we begged so many corporate entities to help us. We took a 10% pay cut to help others who worked at this hospital. We did that.

Our doors were about to close and hundreds of our workers were about to lose their jobs and thousands of people without healthcare were about to have no place to go. We picked up the pieces of a healthcare system going down fast.

Someone thought we were worth saving. We thought we were worth saving and we always will.

It might be simple to say PIH rescued us but in the end it will always be people just like Larry Zimmer who think we made a difference to somebody’s life that is the reason we stayed here.

Thank you.

Margaret Hittinger

Downey

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Published: Feb. 19, 2015 - Volume 13 - Issue 45