To the Editor:

In response to the articles in the Feb. 4-10 issue of North Country This Week “New CPH Facility a Resonse to Health Care ;’Sea Change,’” I think CEO David Acker of Canton-Potsdam Hospital is moving in the right direction. My wife and I both have doctors in Syracuse because of inadequate care being available in St. Lawrence County.

It’s about time that Potsdam, Massena and Claxton-Hepburn quit competing with each other and start collaborating with each other to provide quality health care on a par with downstate facilities.

There are many people in our county that can’t afford to travel or don’t have the means to travel down state, these people often get a lower quality of treatment.

The best thing that can happen is over the next 10 to 20 years is that all the hospitals except for one central hospital become emergency treatment centers and the central hospital become a state of the art treatment center.

Because of the high level of poverty and low income in our county we have a lot of people on Medicare and Medicaid which pays lower than commercial insurance, that makes managing a central hospital more challenging financially.

Phillip Burnett Sr.

Rensselaer Falls