I just read that story and was about to post about it here. Am I wrong, or is the West Campus (old Westwood) pretty much always empty except for the birthing center?

Memorial should have developed a good master plan for facilities decades ago. I'm guessing now they have one, but they've spent so much money on remodels, new under-sized office buildings, soon to be inadequate new parking lots and the underutilized West Campus that it is hard to trust that they aren't making another less than ideal investment here. 10 years ago I think they should have just decided that by 2010 they would replace the whole mess, build an efficient facility somewhere with plenty of land and access.

There seems to be no consistent plan in place.
They just moved Pediatrics to West Campus a few years back which makes sense being that labor and delivery are over there, if they move L&D back they will probably want to move Pediatrics back. Is this wise fiscal and facilities management?

The hospital wanted a monolopy on health care in Midland County. When Westwood originally opened, it was a private hospital. It was run in an efficient manner, and gave great service.

Memorial Hospital saw it's monolopy fading away. When MISD, the county's largest employer, redid their insurance a few years ago, they put in a provision that any care not provided by Memorial Hospital would not be paid for.

Yes, MISD and Memorial Hospital worked together to put the other hospital out of business.

Now Memorial wants even more money, and a bigger monolopy on health care in Midland.

God help us from bureaucrats. They will be the death of us, perhaps even before the terrorists are.

MISD and the Hospital conspiring is pretty much an impossibility.

MISD bids for insurance coverage in an open market using a public bidding process. How does rigging that system to decrease competion in a market benefit MISD, which is looking to spend as little as possible to insure it's very large workforce?

Besides, when in the history of Midland have taxing entities worked closely enough to pull something like that off? They seem to want to bring their own ball to the party.

Maybe someone can answer this question? Why does Memorial seem to coast along pretty much in slow growth mode (I'm not complaining), a little remodel here, a little new equipment there, while MCH in Odessa has been building like crazy for a decade, and with two private hospitals competing with them only blocks away, and Tech?

Is there just a whole heck of a lot more medical care going on in Odessa or have they just gone building crazy?

Os,

It happened. My wife teaches for MISD. When the teachers union forced the state to pony up state insurance for the schools, MISD took the proposal. When the new insurance contracts were signed, ( a few years ago ), all of the MISD employees were told that the insurance would NOT be honored anywhere except Memorial Hospital. (Westwood was private then, I don't recall the name.)

Yes Os, that sort of goings on happens even in Midland. Don't let the public perception of ineptitde fool you. Those folks at City Hall, the Courthouse and the old Exxon building do indeed work together.

As an aside: I used to work for the state in the criminal justice field. We had a great insurance plan, one of the better Blue Cross ones. When the legislature gave in to the teachers and gave them state insurance, the State dropped the good Blue Cross plan across the board and gave all of it's employees the bottom end of the Blue Cross coverage.

And expect us to foot the bill.