I read the slip of paper on my fortune cookie. It said, “Your heart will always make itself known through your words.” These old fashioned destiny tweets give me a quick buzz of serendipity, that magic elixir that tells me that I am exactly where I am supposed to be at any given time.
We all love that Other Worldly jolt; it gives us a sense of control. This was no exception although I was making a serious attempt to quit verbalizing every internal thought. A while back, I received information from a source about something I refer to as the Case of the Missing Hospital in Lawton, OK. I was loaded down with documents that lent credibility to a long ago call for a new Indian hospital. The yellowing papers sat on my desk hedged by a paper clip and I did not write about it although my mind tiptoed over them.
In 1967, the Lawton Indian Hospital opened. At the time, the brass plaque heralded the federal government’s commitment to Indian health care. As if in a hazy fairy tale, Lawton’s Service Unit (to court hospital lingo) brought babies into the world and hosted a variety of health care initiatives including inpatient services. Today, that has all but vanished and the culprit is money.
The Southwest Intertribal Health Board (comprised of tribal leaders from eight area tribes) has petitioned the government for improvements times ten in Lawton. Remarkably, our part of the state is a rarity in Oklahoma in that it does not yet have a new hospital. The reasons vary and I admit that tribal sponsorship of new facilities (for several of the Five Civilized Tribes) with Indian Health Services (IHS) makes their new hospitals possible. I admit Claremore and Tahlequah each have their vintage version of the Indian hospital.
This is more than a soapbox for bemoaning the state of Indian Health Care. But. IHS itself remains in the Intensive Care Unit for its coma-like state. IHS gets around $4 billion in federal appropriations that is inevitably whittled down by lawmakers each year. Meanwhile, the mainstream cost of health care on a per capita basis continues to inch up. IHS patients use about $2,741 per capita in health dollars compared to $6,900 for the rest of America, statistics show.
One Indian health care advocate plopped a copy of testimony in my lap written by a local tribal leader that was presented to the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Labor Health and Human services and Education in 1996. It was well spoken and succinct but destined to fade into a Congressional fog of public record.
This tribal chairman (no longer in office) asked the Senate committee for funding that would secure about $37 million for a new hospital to serve the tribes in and by Lawton. That kind of money was astronomical 15 years ago. I was told that such was the effort to get a new Lawton Indian Hospital that it moved to the top of the wait list (a perennial ledge in Indian Country). A new hospital never materialized. Theories abound on why not, but the lack is still profound.
Limbo is a kind of netherworld where things are forgotten or discarded. This sums up the fate of Lawton’s missing hospital. IHS’ revised Health Facilities Construction Priority System was revamped in 1990, some six years before Lawton’s impassioned plea for a new facility. According to the 2011 IHS funding request, some 23 of 28 proposals for new facilities were placed on the (new and improved) waiting list. In 2009, one facility was built, according to federal records.
If common sense accounts for anything, I gleaned that there are other things, like an area office recommendation that could resuscitate Lawton’s faded plea for a new hospital. Lassoing the attention of our elected state delegates could likewise help. In Oklahoma, a controversial cultural center sits halfway finished in the state’s capital. I noticed that we have a habit of letting things just sit around here - including Indian health care.
Meanwhile, the Southwest Intertribal Health Board continues to lift their collective voice for a new Indian Hospital for the Southern Plains area. And despite a path fraught with breathless bureaucracy, budget reductions and allocations amnesia-- I have learned that the team that wants to win finds a way to do so.
S.E. Ruckman is a special contributor to the Native American Times.