A great deal of attention has been focused recently on Bluefield Regional Medical Center's efforts to acquire a Certificate of Need to provide our patients with advanced cardiology treatment, including open-heart surgery and therapeutic angioplasty.

Our effort to open an ambulatory surgery center in Bluefield, Virginia also is in the news. And, of course, no issue is more pressing than the medical malpractice insurance crisis facing West Virginia physicians. Our primary job, and the primary job of every community hospital, is to provide basic healthcare services to our patients. BRMC is working diligently to help area physicians solve this problem, so that they may continue practicing at our hospital, serving their patients, and ours.

Two major diseases, heart disease and cancer, plague our region. Because of the prevalence of these two killers among our residents, treating those diseases is also a vital focus for community hospitals. These complex diseases, however, demand a different approach than what is required for the basic services hospitals provide, and the treatment of heart disease and cancer is an adjunct to those core services, not a substitute for them. To treat these diseases requires highly trained personnel and expensive high tech equipment in a Center of Excellence environment.

With so much attention concentrated on the insurance crisis, and the fight for permission to build a surgery center and a heart center, it is easy to lose sight of the core services that hospitals really exist to provide. These basic services are why people most often go to the hospital: When your child is sick, or falls and breaks a bone or cuts themselves, or when it's time for your baby to be born, you go to the hospital. To most of us, a hospital without an Emergency Room, or one that doesn't provide obstetric services, or can't take care of your child's broken arm isn't really a complete hospital.

BRMC is committed to providing the basic healthcare services our patients expect, and then as a secondary focus, we will continue seeking permission to build an advanced cardiac treatment center to treat heart disease.