Last week, the Seattle subreddit dredged up a long-time drama between the Laurelhurst neighborhood and Seattle Children’s Hospital about its helicopters.
Seattle Children’s is the go-to specialized pediatric care center for Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho. When children from near and far away need urgent treatment, they’ll get swooped up by a helicopter and taken to Seattle Children’s. This, the affluent North Seattle neighborhood will tell you, is quite the nuisance.
Such a nuisance that a neighborhood group wanted to make sure the hospital wasn’t landing flights on the helipad for non-emergency reasons, according to meeting minutes from 2021. “There needs to be a medical justification form for each flight (one was a broken leg for example),” said one member. In the six years of documented meetings The Stranger looked at, they had a lot more to say.
The lack of empathy is nauseating. Imagine making it your business to harass and hobble a children’s hospital for 40-odd years.
2021, we’re all in the depths of the covid crisis, hospital staff are already beyond overworked, and you’re gonna moan that they haven’t provided documentation to justify last month’s emergencies to a frigging community council group?
Rotten little over-entitled hoarders. Good on the people keeping this filthy business in the public eye.
The vice president is Pat Chaney. She retired from Oracle before taking up that mantle. She’s the one who specifically is requesting the reason for each of the children being flown to be reported to her.
Yes, Oracle. That Oracle.
Ooh. That tracks.