To the editor:

There is a new 46,000-square-foot cardiology department with four doctors who chose to stay and space enough for related clinics. The IT department will occupy a new $6.2 million building. A new $14 million surgery department vacates 14,000 square feet at Lawrence Memorial Hospital. All of this and other aspects of Sunday’s article are good for the Lawrence community. CEO Gene Meyer speculated about the next areas of LMH that deservedly need expansion and updating. A growing community needs a comprehensive medical center. Bravo!

Yet nowhere in that article did CEO Meyer even hint at LMH’s abysmal inability to care for victims of sex crimes in this same community, a topic disclosed again recently in the Journal-World. LMH does not have an allotted space and/or trained nursing staff to properly and compassionately provide care for and collect evidence from victims of rape. Instead they have to endure further humiliation and torment being escorted to Topeka to collect evidence.

Maybe CEO Meyer at the behest of the district attorney is trying to find some little corner of that newly available 14,000-square-foot space and spend a bit of those millions to establish a rape victims clinic at LMH. Perhaps it might induce one reluctant rape victim, not to mention those willing to report, to feel more secure seeking help if she weren’t going to be bused out of town. CEO Meyer, if a rape victim’s clinic is part of your active planning stage, it would have been nice to hear about it.