To the Editor:

Your excellent coverage of the horrible situation regarding the horrible treatment by St. Peter’s of Dr. Hedy Migden and her patients in Altamont reminds me of the similarly awful actions of St. Peter’s in closing the popular and vital clinic in Westerlo a few years ago. Sad to say, there’s a pattern here of deliberate and callous cutting off of local health services for outlying locales.

Here in Westerlo, St. Peter’s closed our doctor’s offices because they said it cost too much. They would not allow the offices to stay open until we found another doctor (it took six months). They hired a hatchet woman to get rid of everything. She said she was going to throw all the medical supplies into the dump.

I went over there with Jack Milner to stop her. (She was doing this to another facility and had been hired because she had done it for other groups.) When I quietly told that hatchet woman that there was a special room in hell waiting for her, she went inside and called the police. When they came, I was told that she had said she was being attacked. I knew the Trooper and asked him if it looked like I was attacking her (Jack and I were standing outside talking about this mess).

At the same time, St. Peter’s was in the process of getting $300 million in grants, but they wouldn’t allow our small clinic to stay open to help the folks who had moved to houses across the road from the clinic to get daily care. A group of concerned citizens worked hard to get them to allow the offices to stay open, even being interviewed on TV, but nothing would stop St. Peter’s from closing our clinic.

Meanwhile, Deb Theiss-Mackey and several others worked hard and found our new doctor, who has been here for a number of years, operating out of the clinic St. Peter’s closed.

Dr. Migden, you keep fighting St. Peter’s. They are cowards with an ongoing pattern of depriving outlying communities of local health care.

Bonnie Kohl-Laub

Westerlo