The Partial Observer by Kristian Connolly

Healthcare and COVID, in First-person Rural

COOPERSTOWN—Growing up in the Village of Cooperstown, my first pediatrician was a classmate’s dad. My second pediatrician was the mother of another classmate. When I aged out of pediatrics and needed a primary care physician while in college in Binghamton, I turned to yet another Cooperstown classmate and friend’s parent as my trusted healthcare provider.

As a young athlete, while none of the school or club teams would ever claim to have had team physicians on staff, I knew that an injury to me or one of my teammates during a game was likely to be initially addressed on the scene by a spectator who also happened to be a skilled practitioner and a member of my community.

From the age of 9 up until the age of 22 or so, whenever I needed to see my doctor, or any other doctor, I literally walked the 250 yards from my house to MIBH (pronounced mib-uh), as I will always know it, to see someone I actually knew independently of when they were in their white coat. 

I was young, mostly ignorant, and on my parents’ health plan. So I probably didn’t know the half of it. But my experience then formed my impression of what a rural community healthcare experience should look like. And that’s the rural community healthcare experience I’d still hoped to find when my family decided to relocate here earlier this summer. I feel reasonably confident in making the statement that Mary Imogene Bassett was aiming for the institution named in her honor to be that kind of rural community healthcare provider for the Cooperstown community.

It’s certainly the kind of provider I was hearing about on my second official day on the job at this paper, which found me outside of Bassett Medical Center in Cooperstown, listening to both United States Senator Charles E. Schumer and Bassett Healthcare President and CEO Staci Thompson talk about the importance of rural healthcare providers to their communities, and the exemplary service Bassett provides to its community. Generally, to be sure, but especially with relation to COVID. It was millions of dollars in COVID reimbursement funding from the federal government that had everyone gathered that day in the first place. 

But this past week, while my family and I dealt with COVID in our household, I came to understand something very different, and personally distressing, as our somewhat unique, or at least not-everyday, situation helped me learn how local and statewide healthcare entities actually exist and interact in providing access to care for citizens in need of healthcare or healthcare-related services. 

First, a very brief note about COVID: I live with a great respect for COVID, and a belief that we, as humans, understand so little about COVID that to pretend otherwise is dangerous and ill-advised. In addition to trying to still manage my spatial relationship with individuals and crowds, I carry a mask on me at all times, and wear it often. I wear my mask to help protect me, and I wear my mask to help protect you. I also wear my mask in solidarity with those people who need everyone to take simple steps like this if they have any chance of feeling safe, and cared for, in a COVID world.