The following story was told to John Taft Investigative Reporter, by an observer.

Grants Pass, OR (7-20-02) -. A couple of days ago an 84 year old man fell off the roof that he was working on via a sheet of plywood that hadn’t been secured. The plywood suffered no ill effect, but the man landed on his head and shoulder. He received a gash to his head, and his clavicle bone (collarbone) was broken in the shoulder. He was lucky he wasn’t killed. But his luck ran out when he was rushed to the new Josephine County Hospital. The waiting room was filled with those seeking medical treatment; help was slow in coming. The emergency section is reported to be seriously understaffed causing long waits for the injured patients.

When the injured man was brought into the hospital, the normal papers were given to the man to be filled out. The observer explained to the receptionist that the information was already in their computer due to an earlier visit, and nothing had changed. The clerk was annoyed, and told the friend that’s the way we do it. He retorted that he thought computers were there to speed things up and again explained that all the information they needed was in their files. The admissions clerk finally agreed to take the information from the computer files, as the logic was irrefutable.

The observer discussed his long wait in the lobby, his interaction with the people there, and what he saw. He told about a young woman who came into the emergency room and filled out the necessary paper work. She had a small knife cut on her finger sustained at her place of employment. The medical technician washed and placed a small bandage on the cut. She then left but returned again in a short time saying her employer sent her back to get a tetanus shot. The technician exclaimed, "Oh, I forgot. I’ll take care of that right now." The observer felt that the young woman’s insurance would be billed twice since he noted she filled out paper work twice. He felt this was gross incompetence and shouldn’t have happened.

He described people milling around in the waiting area. One poor soul was wandering around asking if anyone could help her. She was trying to find out the condition of someone brought into emergency. While waiting the observer found something interesting to watch on the courtesy television. While so doing a large volunteer lady came over to the TV set and changed the channel. There was no one else watching the set at that time. After over two hours the 84-year-old man was finally able to leave, nothing was done for the cut on his head, and his arm was placed in a sling.

The opinion of the observer was that two former competent hospitals, Josephine General Hospital and Southern Oregon Hospital, had been traded in for a high-tech wilderness that was understaffed and not meeting the needs of the public during the time he observed. The observers’ parting advice about the new hospital was, "Don’t get sick or injured; you don’t want to go there."