With the health plan proposals in, the College is now seeking outside advice on which features of its favorite proposal to accept, if any, and which to modify.
The Health Plan Board and the Student Senate-affiliated Health Plan Advisory Council met Thursday with one such outside advisor, Dr. Richard Keeling, to discuss the planning stages of the upcoming Student Health renovation.
Keeling has worked as a consultant for the College since last summer, when administrators made the decision to revamp the Student Health program following College Physician Judith Appleton's June announcement of her intention to retire in October.
The Board has received several proposals in response to the Request for Proposal (RFP) the College drafted and sent out to various organizations last summer. Proposals include one from Allen Memorial Hospital, which estimates the cost of adding a Student Health program as $1 million, and most recently from the Oberlin Clinic, which is willing to continue its current contract with the College although it originally declined to do so.
The proposal that currently seems the most viable to Board and Advisory Council members is one by Collegiate Health Care (CHC), which so far has met all of the mandatory requirements Board members established based on student input.
"We're interested in negotiating with CHC," senator junior Meagan Willits, a voting member of the Board and co-chair of the Advisory Council, said.
Senator senior Dan Persky, also a voting Board member and the other Advisory Council co-chair, said further discussion of the CHC proposal is being kept under wraps for the moment until further decisions and possible negotiations have been made.
Keeling discussed Student Health on a general level with members of the Advisory Council following the Board meeting.
Some students were concerned about the location of the new Student Health program, whether they choose to accept one proposal or establish an internal College-run health care program.
"We were originally looking into renovating an old house on Woodland Street, but the rough estimate for doing that was $120,000," Persky said. "The Advisory Council is seriously looking into getting the school to build on campus, but we don't know yet what other possibilities there are."
Keeling said building a new space for Student Health would be the most cost-effective. "Trying to retrofit is highly expensive. You'd be better off building than trying to bring an old building up to access codes," he said.
He added that the closer the Student Health location is to the center of campus, the better. "The key thing about location is it ought to be on-campus. It's philosophical, too. You'd like health to be central, theoretically as well as geographically. The problem with the current set-up is that it's peripheral," he said.
Keeling also discussed with students the possibility of Student Health staff members working with other departments on campus, including Residential Life and Services and the Counseling Center.
Students expressed concern that the Counseling Center may not be able to work effectively with Student Health staff members.
"As much as the Counseling Center says they want a connection with student health, I don't see it happening. It's never happened in the past," sophomore Kate Bauer said.
Keeling also asked Council members for a time frame of developing and implementing a new Student Health program.
"We're going to keep doing research through Winter Term. No decision will be made until February. I think we need to have a decision made by early March at the latest," Persky said. "We're pretty clear on what we need to do. This will definitely be implemented next fall-we're committed to that."
Keeling said some of the most important advice he could give to the Advisory Council was to continue to take an active role in implementing the new Student Health program. "My assessment of Oberlin is that there is a lot of student voice. Please insist on your voice as students all the way through this," he said.
"The thing I worry about a little with Oberlin's process is inertia; things happen very slowly. But if we're talking about renovating and building space, things need to get moving."
Copyright © 1997, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 126, Number 10, November 21, 1997
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