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health care: st. elizabeth's hospital hosts sen. dick durbin

Story and photos by LIZ QUIRIN
Messenger editor

St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Belleville hosted a town hall meeting with U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin to talk about health care. He also lauded the hospital for its efforts to stimulate the local economy with incentives paid to hospital employees to spend money locally.

A $50,000 hospital incentive for employees turned into $85,000 in spending, according to the hospital’s CEO, Kevin Shrake.

Durbin commended the hospital for its efforts and then talked about the possibilities for health care reform and what people want.

“The bottom line,” Durbin said, “is to keep what’s good and reduce the cost” of a plan. “We must find a way to reward good outcomes.”

The real push from the Obama administration is to develop and present some form of health care policy soon.
“We hope to get legislation by the end of this year,” Durbin said. “This is a chance for us to do something for this country.”

After making remarks, Durbin took questions from those attending the meeting, mostly health care workers.
Some of the questions referred to a shortage of nurses because not enough nursing faculty were available to teach the classes.

“We’re trying to find ways to work with hospitals to help move nursing folks to higher levels and subsidize nursing faculties’ salaries,” Durbin told his listeners.