Children's Hospital Wars

in Minneapolis/St. Paul?

Gary Schwitzer Comments

wbgleason Children's Hospital plans to cut up to 250 jobs http://bit.ly/cYMfRb First casualties of local children's hospital wars... #UMN

I've tweeted on the matter, but Gary Schwitzer has done it right:

Where was the hospital competition/expansion angle in story of hospital job cuts?

This week, the Twin Cities' two major newspapers reported - in varying but incomplete ways - an announcement from Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota that it planned to cut up to 250 jobs by mid November.

The Pioneer Press beat its larger crosstown competitor, the Star Tribune, by at least doing some original reporting on the story.

The story also never commented on the hospital's expensive expansion, arguably the clearest manifestation of its competition with Fairview University medical center, which has also built a new children's facility (pictured at left in a photo taken last summer). We've written about this before, and how the Twin Cities may lead the nation in the number of different, separately-operated, competing children's hospitals it now has.

But the limited Pioneer Press story nonetheless still showed up the state's #1 newspaper, the Star Tribune, which only managed to rewrite and republish an Associated Press story, which ran only 123 words and was put in a little corner of page B4 in the Metro section.

Wow.

Local citizens deserve much more scrutiny of the local hospital industry than that.

I've posted before on this appalling situation:

Children as Pawns in the Latest Expensive Healthcare Competition Involving the University of Minnesota