Memorial Medical Center is not what it was

Dear Editor,

A recent puff piece by Dr. Prasad Podila in the Las Cruces Sun-News, lauding the administration of Memorial Medical Center, compels me to write. Spoiler alert: Mine is a dissenting opinion.

I was a practicing physician in Las Cruces from 1981 to 2021. Memorial Medical Center was never a “rural hospital,” as Dr. Podila calls it. When he came here, there were two neurosurgeons covering the emergency room 24/7. Their presence made the difference between life and death for a severe head injury. There were two plastic surgeons on call to the ER for dog bites, facial fractures and hand injuries. We had an excellent corps of physician-anesthesiologists. We had cardio-pulmonary surgeons and excellent orthopedists doing innovative procedures.

More important than the scope of services, which looks impressive on a web site, is the quality of the people providing those services. Memorial Medical Center used to be staffed by physicians who spent their careers here, who devoted themselves to the care of the community, who were an integral part of Las Cruces. They were men and women to whom I entrusted the care of myself and my family. Now it seems that the medical staff is made up of transients.

Memorial Medical Center was originally Memorial General Hospital, a city-county facility. It did not have the financial support to sustain itself and so became a private nonprofit institution, and  then a private for-profit owned by Lifepoint Health, which itself is owned by Apollo Global Management.

I don’t recognize the hospital as Dr. Podila described it in 1998, and I don’t recognize what it is now.

Daniel Allan, M.D., F.A.C.S.

Las Cruces