Health services move to neighborhoods good idea

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In these trying economic times, we’ve all been forced to cut costs, but it’s not always so easy. For an organization as large as MSU, balancing a budget requires slightly more unorthodox and creative strategies.

Proposals and prognostications on how MSU will continue to survive into the next decade have abounded, with MSU suggesting cutting costs in the most unexpected of places.

One such proposal by the administration was to move the student health services from Olin Health Center to the MSU Clinical Center on Service Road. But when this information was leaked, it caused no small stir among the MSU community.

Many students objected to this change, asking how moving student health services farther away to a more remote location improved students’ overall welfare and convenience. We even voiced our outright objection to the plan in an editorial published last month.

One possibility that did not come up in the recent debate, however, was the idea of moving Olin’s services to MSU’s six dorm “neighborhoods” instead of the MSU Clinical Center. This information came to light when last week The State News Editorial Board sat down with MSU president Lou Anna K. Simon and MSU spokesman Terry Denbow.

The basic idea is that Olin’s services would be spread out and split among the six neighborhoods on campus, which all would provide general care to students. In the case of an emergency, these small clinics would provide transportation to other places such as Lansing Urgent Care or Sparrow Hospital. The overall idea would be to make student health services more convenient for students by bringing health care to them — not the other way around.

We can’t find much wrong with this idea, at least in how it was described to us. Each neighborhood clinic would be open to every MSU student, including those living off campus. When student health services are closer to the students, the students are much more likely to take advantage of them, which couldn’t help but result in the improved health of the student body.

Our one concern would be the obvious fact that each of these smaller centers would not be as well-equipped as the large central center that exists now at Olin.

One way to get around this would be to have certain “specializations” at different neighborhood centers. Each center would provide general care, but perhaps the Brody clinic could specialize in blood work, or the Red Cedar clinic in sexually transmitted infections. A student might have to go a little farther to get something they need, but likely it wouldn’t be too much of an inconvenience.

Obviously, there still are plenty of unknowns about this plan. Primarily, it’s still unclear to us how making six medical clinics instead of one would effectively cut costs for the university. If this is a real possibility for students, the administration needs to explain its reasoning and seek feedback on this in a responsible way.

If the university really sees a chance to save money and improve health services for students, then this idea is a win-win. But it’s up to the administration to prove that they’re serious about this, and that this idea, while well-intentioned, isn’t just another pipe-dream conjured up to temporarily appease students.

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