When it comes to the care of my health, who is in control of my care? I am. When it comes to the care of community health, who is in control of our care? We are. Every single one of us, individually and cooperatively, is in control of our health care gathered around one table on equal footing.

Patients and medical staff sit at the same table. Representatives of corporate administration owning property also sit at this same table. But let’s be very clear about where ownership begins and ends. An industrial medical complex owning facilities and employing staff does not mean it owns the care of an individual’s or a community’s health. A medical complex may own the means for providing health care, but the road of ownership ends with the means. When a patient walks through the doors of a medical facility, the road of ownership by the medical complex ends and teamwork begins. The medical complex is powerless over any one person’s health unless that person chooses to walk through its doors.

We in the greater Albert Lea area, including some Iowans, own our health, and we choose how our health is cared for. If a community has 400 babies being born each year in a medical complex close by, then the community will continue to enter those doors. But, if those doors move 20 to 40 miles away to another county, then the community will create new doors, and the community will start entering those doors for giving birth to their babies.

When a community chooses how its health is cared for, this is not “bashing;” rather, it is declaring ownership of how care of health occurs in its community. No CEOs from the outside decide what goes or stays when it comes to what the local community decides as essential medical services.

Throughout the United States, rural communities are compelled to reinvent their role in how health care is experienced. No longer can we sit on our hands, shrug our shoulders saying, “do whatever you want.” When independence is asserted, perhaps it looks like disloyalty or lack of appreciation for what has gone before. Asserting independence, challenging narratives not supported by the facts (for example, yes, it is viable to have a hospital in Freeborn County, see the Quorum Report on the Save Our Hospital Facebook page) apparently makes some people uncomfortable. Do not misunderstand. Feeling deep appreciation for the medical staff in Albert Lea, Austin and Rochester, both my wife and I give heartfelt thanks to the professional caregivers who serve these communities with professionalism and compassion. Ownership of our health and the access to care we need is the issue, not the medical staff.

The over 400 people who gathered for a meal and silent auction in support of Save Our Hospital at First Lutheran on Saturday have declared by their presence that reinvention of health care in Freeborn County including two counties in Iowa is not dead. The resolve is only growing.

Joel B. Erickson

Albert Lea