To the Editor:
Our new health care facility proposed for location on New Jersey Avenue will be called The Complete Care Medical and Dental Professionals Building. A highly professional team of physicians, dentists, nurses, clinical assistants and other healthcare givers will staff it. The staff will include local physicians, including local specialists on staff at Cape Regional Medical Center.
It will offer family medical and dental services to children and families, OB/GYN services to women, including prenatal care to expecting moms, and adult and various specialty medical services. It will be open nights and weekends to make services more accessible to working people—like all of Complete Care facilities in South Jersey, most of its patients will be working people and their children.
Like much of South Jersey the Wildwood area has a large population of working people whose employ-ers do not furnish health benefits. Although many of our patients are working people, we do require them to pay a share of the costs in the form of a co-payment. I’ve heard a few objections to this project on the mistaken grounds that it is a free clinic and will encourage vagrants or other undesirable people to locate to Wildwood. This is a case of mistaken identity or a farfetched delusion.
I have no doubt that just about everybody in Wildwood knows well that it is not easy to access a doctor or dentist’s office in Cape May County, much less health services in the evening or weekend when they are off work, much less a specialist, much less any medical or dental service if they have no health insurance. This is true any time of year and painfully true in the crowded summer tourist season. It is just as true that the Complete Care medical and dental professionals building is not a free clinic, nor is it going to attract one person to relocate themselves to Wildwood.
What it is going to do is provide comprehensive medical and dental care to several thousands of folks, especially working people and their children, expect-ing moms and senior citizens, in a health under-served area. It’s also going to help the hospital re-duce unnecessary emergency room crowding and costs; it’s going to create jobs; it’s going to perk up north New Jersey Avenue with a beautiful office building. And it’s going to make Wildwood a better place, a healthier place to live and visit. It’s a good thing.
GIL WALTER
Wildwood
(ED NOTE: Walter is president/CEO of Complete Care Health Network)