Letters to the Editor

From neighbors:
Letter To The Editor of the Seattle PI-- Unpublished
Subject: Reply to P-I editorial 01/15/08

Your 01/14/08 editorial "Finding consensus" states that "Children's Hospital certainly needs to expand". The key questions are, by how much and where? Consider the facts:

CHRMC justifies the scope of its expansion by forecasting a need for a total of 548 pediatric beds by 2020. But the Washington State Department of Health (DOH) estimated this need at only 317 beds while a recent estimate by Field Associates put the number at 271, a substantial disparity.

You "liked what Children's Ruth Benfield said at a [Citizen's Advisory Committee] meeting last week: '...we will ultimately be able to come together with something that is workable ' ". However, when asked at an earlier CAC meeting why Children's OPPOSED Swedish Hospital's recent proposal to the DOH for new pediatric beds on the East Side, Ms. Benfield said "Swedish is a fine hospital, but they can't provide the same level of care that we can." Apparently it is ok for Children's to expand but not its competitors.

Finally, it is not only "some neighbors" who want the hospital to expand elsewhere. Many of the hospital's own physicians, nurses, and staff dread the impact of an entire generation (25 years, not 15) of very costly construction overlaying their existing buildings, where they treat the most vulnerable of patients.

Letter to the Editor of the Seattle PI, 1/10/2008-- Published
Building a second campus would cost less money

Seattle's Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center proposes a 1.5 million sq. ft. on-site expansion overlaying their current 900,000 sq. ft. campus. CHRMC says "it would be too impractical and expensive" to expand to a second campus (Wednesday P-I), but has not released the cost of its own expansion plan. In fact, building a second campus would cost substantially less than on-site expansion. New construction on an unoccupied site is far less expensive than upgrading old buildings, especially for high-tech uses.

The cost-effective alternative: Maintain the current campus for non-critical patients and build a second campus at South Lake Union. That would save hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on world-class faculty and state-of-the-art equipment.

This alternative would avoid the severe impact of 15-20 years of on-site construction on the patients, families and medical staff of a working hospital. It would offer the advantage of contiguity to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and CHRMC's own new South Lake Union research center. CHRMC's vital mission would be better served by this cost-effective alternative.

Recent articles in the PI and Times:

• Bigger Children's Hospital means more time in traffic
• Children's Hospital: Finding consensus
• Still too tall, say Children's Hospital neighbors
• Swedish Plans to Build in Highlands