Close to Change

On August 7, 2012 Camden Clark Medical Center announced the impending closure of the St. Joseph Hospital campus in Parkersburg, WV. Among the reasons provided for closure of the hospital were upcoming changes established by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Being a person who was born at St Joseph’s and raised in Parkersburg, I was moved by the news of the upcoming closure. Being a physician and a healthcare consultant whose life and career have been greatly impacted by the same legislation, I was moved even more. So moved in fact, that I decided to write a book. As I began to research about the closing of the hospital of my birth and what that change would mean for my hometown, I quickly realized that I was being pulled in two other directions. It was going to be impossible to write this book without looking at changes within myself and upcoming changes in healthcare for our nation. The closing of St. Joe's became the prism between those two other ideas. It is a book about healthcare, but it is more about change.