There are few things more important than our health. However, all too often we allow decisions about our medical needs to be made with little substantiated data and options.

Recently, a family member was admitted to a hospital in Connecticut for cardiac issues. We were told that an invasive procedure was needed. We weren’t told that this complicated procedure is performed 20 times more frequently and successfully at a hospital just a few minutes away.

We need to educate ourselves on what our hospitals are doing. Every week in the Sun Journal, I see ads for our two local hospitals competing to perform cardiac procedures. Both ads are equally significant in their size, but the facts are very different.

Central Maine Medical Center’s cardiac program had to go through a significant process to get a Certificate of Need from the state of Maine. St. Mary’s didn’t have to go through the same process for its emergency cardiac angioplasty program because it had projected a very low volume of procedures.

I want to be treated at a hospital that performs a high volume of these procedures as opposed to a low-volume hospital that was not held to the same state approval process.

Wouldn’t it be comforting to know that if anything went wrong, you wouldn’t have to be transported mid-procedure to any other hospital?

Lucas B. Hartford, Litchfield

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