The Buzz Around Town
with Editor Kevin McManus
File photo Cleveland Clinic’s announcement of the July 1 closure of Medina Hospital’s birthing unit has led to much emotion and public outcry from community members.
My brother and I were born at Medina General Hospital. So were most of the kids we grew up with. A lot of my local friends’ and colleagues’ children were born there, too. It’s extremely common around here to find entire families at a time that share that common venue for that common milestone.
So it comes as no surprise the news of the hospital closing its birthing unit July 1 has led to a great deal of emotion and outcry from many throughout the community. Social media is buzzing, petitions circulating.
“The fact that the nurses and staff were your neighbors, your fellow PTO moms, your church members, it gave a sense of comfort and security,” city resident Kris Gambaccini said.
Calling the move “heartbreaking,” Gambaccini is expecting her eighth child in late July and was scheduled to deliver at Medina, her last three having been born there, as well.
That will no longer be the case, as Gambaccini, and many like herself, will now have to travel between 20 and 40 miles to deliver.
The fact that Medina’s was the only facility in the county to deliver a baby is just salt in the proverbial wound, leading many to criticize the Cleveland Clinic’s self-proclaimed “patient-first” guiding principal, as well as the future of the hospital as a whole. Summa Wadsworth-Rittman Hospital closed its birthing unit in 2009; inpatient services were shut down in 2014.
Despite the impending loss of the birthing unit, Medina Hospital’s future does not look bleak at all, just different.
Cleveland Clinic, one of the worldwide leaders in the medical industry and a monster-sized corporation, “merged” with the then-independent Medina General Hospital in 2009, since dropping “General” from its namesake and dropping about $80 million in improvements and expansions.
The Clinic is currently planning a $5.8 million expansion of Medina Hospital’s emergency room and a separate $1.3 million expansion of its intensive care unit. The volume of surgeries performed at Medina is up. Oncology services have increased significantly.
But the birth numbers don’t lie, according to the Clinic.
Babies delivered at Medina Hospital is a rapidly declining trend. While about 65 percent of local expectant mothers here choose to deliver outside of Medina County nowadays, the Clinic has made the move in order to centralize deliveries at Clinic hospitals equipped with neonatal intensive care units.
From a business standpoint, the closure makes some sense, but that’s not what many in the community would like to hear, Medina Mayor Dennis Hanwell included.
Hanwell said he was somewhat shocked of the announcement by one of the largest employers in his jurisdiction, one that is the exclusive health and wellness partner with city government.
Hanwell said he is attempting to keep lines of communication open with the hospital, specifically President Dr. Tom Tulisiak, to hopefully influence reconsideration. The community-minded Hanwell sees the lack of a neonatal intensive care unit as an opportunity for Cleveland Clinic – which clearly has the dough to make huge investments in its smaller ventures – to increase services even further at Medina Hospital, driving more business and creating more jobs, rather than relocating 41 positions elsewhere.
“It’s an economic boost,” Hanwell said. “It seems to me from the outside looking in, we’re losing this volume, but we could we increase the volume?”
Stressing his utmost gratitude for Medina Hospital’s improvements over the years, as well as his respect for Tulisiak, Hanwell said the city is “doing what we can” to convince the Clinic to keep birthing services here.
Although, the Clinic’s public relations gurus have provided more than enough legitimate reasoning and data behind its decision to close Medina Hospital’s birthing unit, many locals are upset, and even outraged, as the birth of a child invokes emotion on many, many levels.
However, what remains to be seen is whether the “patient-first” Clinic will grant that open dialogue with not only the mayor, but the community at large.
Read more inside.
Rado’s racin’
I first met Mike Rado by accident early on in my reporting career.
One Sunday morning years ago, I was covering Beards of the Old Northwest’s charity beard-off at Sully’s Irish Pub and witnessed Rado, a Medina native, take the title in the under-4-inch beard category.
I jokingly asked the burly and tattooed Rado, “Why do women love your beard?”
“Well, why wouldn’t they?” Rado replied.
Classic.
Several years later, with a much bigger beard and even more tattoos, Rado, who now lives in Pittsburgh and owns a butcher shop, is a contestant on the upcoming 29th season of CBS’ “The Amazing Race.” The 1996 Medina High School graduate will make his debut at 10 p.m. this Thursday night and will be in attendance for an Episode 2 watch party April 5 at Jojo’s Sports Bar & Grille in Medina, his former longtime employer.
This season of “The Amazing Race” was filmed last summer during a period of three weeks. Stepping off from Los Angeles, the jaunt spanned nine countries, 17 cities and 36,000 miles, a CBS spokeswoman said.
But this isn’t the first time Rado has competed on a reality TV competition. In 2015, he was on Esquire TV’s “Next Best Burger,” which grabbed the attention of a third-party casting agency that approached Rado with the idea of competing on “The Amazing Race.”
“They asked me if I had ever heard of it. I said, ‘You’re kidding; get outta here.’ Since the show’s inception, I wanted to be on it,” Rado said. “It’s the only network reality show I was truly ever interested in.”
Read more inside.
Contact me
As always, I look forward to hearing from you and will gladly accept news tips at kmcmanus@thepostnewspapers.com.
Make it a great week, Medina.
So it comes as no surprise the news of the hospital closing its birthing unit July 1 has led to a great deal of emotion and outcry from many throughout the community. Social media is buzzing, petitions circulating.
“The fact that the nurses and staff were your neighbors, your fellow PTO moms, your church members, it gave a sense of comfort and security,” city resident Kris Gambaccini said.
Calling the move “heartbreaking,” Gambaccini is expecting her eighth child in late July and was scheduled to deliver at Medina, her last three having been born there, as well.
That will no longer be the case, as Gambaccini, and many like herself, will now have to travel between 20 and 40 miles to deliver.
The fact that Medina’s was the only facility in the county to deliver a baby is just salt in the proverbial wound, leading many to criticize the Cleveland Clinic’s self-proclaimed “patient-first” guiding principal, as well as the future of the hospital as a whole. Summa Wadsworth-Rittman Hospital closed its birthing unit in 2009; inpatient services were shut down in 2014.
Despite the impending loss of the birthing unit, Medina Hospital’s future does not look bleak at all, just different.
Cleveland Clinic, one of the worldwide leaders in the medical industry and a monster-sized corporation, “merged” with the then-independent Medina General Hospital in 2009, since dropping “General” from its namesake and dropping about $80 million in improvements and expansions.
The Clinic is currently planning a $5.8 million expansion of Medina Hospital’s emergency room and a separate $1.3 million expansion of its intensive care unit. The volume of surgeries performed at Medina is up. Oncology services have increased significantly.
But the birth numbers don’t lie, according to the Clinic.
Babies delivered at Medina Hospital is a rapidly declining trend. While about 65 percent of local expectant mothers here choose to deliver outside of Medina County nowadays, the Clinic has made the move in order to centralize deliveries at Clinic hospitals equipped with neonatal intensive care units.
From a business standpoint, the closure makes some sense, but that’s not what many in the community would like to hear, Medina Mayor Dennis Hanwell included.
Hanwell said he was somewhat shocked of the announcement by one of the largest employers in his jurisdiction, one that is the exclusive health and wellness partner with city government.
Hanwell said he is attempting to keep lines of communication open with the hospital, specifically President Dr. Tom Tulisiak, to hopefully influence reconsideration. The community-minded Hanwell sees the lack of a neonatal intensive care unit as an opportunity for Cleveland Clinic – which clearly has the dough to make huge investments in its smaller ventures – to increase services even further at Medina Hospital, driving more business and creating more jobs, rather than relocating 41 positions elsewhere.
“It’s an economic boost,” Hanwell said. “It seems to me from the outside looking in, we’re losing this volume, but we could we increase the volume?”
Stressing his utmost gratitude for Medina Hospital’s improvements over the years, as well as his respect for Tulisiak, Hanwell said the city is “doing what we can” to convince the Clinic to keep birthing services here.
Although, the Clinic’s public relations gurus have provided more than enough legitimate reasoning and data behind its decision to close Medina Hospital’s birthing unit, many locals are upset, and even outraged, as the birth of a child invokes emotion on many, many levels.
However, what remains to be seen is whether the “patient-first” Clinic will grant that open dialogue with not only the mayor, but the community at large.
Read more inside.
Rado’s racin’
I first met Mike Rado by accident early on in my reporting career.
One Sunday morning years ago, I was covering Beards of the Old Northwest’s charity beard-off at Sully’s Irish Pub and witnessed Rado, a Medina native, take the title in the under-4-inch beard category.
I jokingly asked the burly and tattooed Rado, “Why do women love your beard?”
“Well, why wouldn’t they?” Rado replied.
Classic.
Several years later, with a much bigger beard and even more tattoos, Rado, who now lives in Pittsburgh and owns a butcher shop, is a contestant on the upcoming 29th season of CBS’ “The Amazing Race.” The 1996 Medina High School graduate will make his debut at 10 p.m. this Thursday night and will be in attendance for an Episode 2 watch party April 5 at Jojo’s Sports Bar & Grille in Medina, his former longtime employer.
This season of “The Amazing Race” was filmed last summer during a period of three weeks. Stepping off from Los Angeles, the jaunt spanned nine countries, 17 cities and 36,000 miles, a CBS spokeswoman said.
But this isn’t the first time Rado has competed on a reality TV competition. In 2015, he was on Esquire TV’s “Next Best Burger,” which grabbed the attention of a third-party casting agency that approached Rado with the idea of competing on “The Amazing Race.”
“They asked me if I had ever heard of it. I said, ‘You’re kidding; get outta here.’ Since the show’s inception, I wanted to be on it,” Rado said. “It’s the only network reality show I was truly ever interested in.”
Read more inside.
Contact me
As always, I look forward to hearing from you and will gladly accept news tips at kmcmanus@thepostnewspapers.com.
Make it a great week, Medina.