As someone who has worked at the Albert Lea hospital for 20 years, the events of the last year have been very disheartening. It is a sad situation that Mayo is closing services that our community needs, and even worse when I have seen firsthand that these changes aren’t working. What those of us in the hospital have seen over the last few months came out in the news recently when Mayo announced they weren’t ready to make these harmful changes. No kidding.

We have been seeing patients moved from Austin to Albert Lea or Mankato because of lack of staffing and space issues. This is a hardship on people, especially on older people who can’t travel to see their loved ones. We have what we need here in Albert Lea to continue being a successful hospital, and the community needs the services we are ready to provide. Yet Mayo keeps insisting that they aren’t making enough profits to continue providing these essential services to families in our community. This greed is just wrong.

It seems clear that even if people can make it to Austin (hope there isn’t a bad snowstorm that closes I-90), they don’t have room or staff in place to take care of the people being sent there. So why do this? I think instead of delaying their plan to take away services from Albert Lea, they should do the right thing and cancel the plan altogether.

Patty Hintz

Albert Lea