Letters to the Editor

Student Health up to Par To the Editor:

I am writing to correct several erroneous statements made in the article and editorial about the Student Health Service ("Students complain about Health Service," The Daily Pennsylvanian, 2/18/02).

Over the years, the majority of students seen on a walk-in basis did not have urgent medical problems. The volume of patients with non-urgent complaints resulted in ever-increasing waiting times, to the detriment of students who did require more immediate care.

The same-day appointment system allows the Health Service to offer appointments to students whose problems are not urgent in nature. Contrary to statements in your editorial, we still provide immediate evaluation and treatment for students with urgent problems. By redirecting students who can be accommodated with a same-day appointment, we now provide care more quickly to students who need more acute attention.

As a result, waiting times for all patients (those with appointments and those seen on an urgent basis) have decreased significantly. Surveys conducted last year showed that most students would have preferred a same-day appointment rather than an open-ended wait for walk-in treatment; this year, surveys indicate that most students are satisfied with the changes in the appointment systems.

Our staffing levels have in fact compared favorably to those of our peers in benchmarking studies by the American College Health Association. They also exceed the state's standards for managed care organizations for ratio of providers to patients. Even so, we increased our staffing in the past year and now have 12 primary care providers and five women's health providers.

The article also chose to omit some very important information that was made available to the DP, namely the results of patient satisfaction surveys. These surveys consistently show that most students report a high level of satisfaction with the care they receive: 95 percent of students rate their care as good, very good or excellent.

The Student Health Service has a performance improvement plan that continually monitors the care that is provided and the systems that support care delivery.

Evelyn WienerDirector, Student Health Service

Hypocrisy everywhere To the Editor:

Fellow letter-writer Gary Altman asks, "where has Dan Fishback found the authority to judge 'us' with his broad generalizations?" ("Judaism and Zionism," DP, 2/12/02).

Dan is not engaging in any kind of broad generalization. His acknowledgement that "everyone has their own definitions, and they're all equally valid," means that he is not generalizing; he's being respectful of your opinion, which makes it all the more ironic that you're not being respectful of his.

In fact, all three of last week's letters seemed to attack Dan's column as some kind of polemic against Zionism. To me, less than an attack on Zionism, it was an intelligent observation about some hypocrisy. There is hypocrisy at a Bar Mitzvah; there is hypocrisy and irony everywhere.

This is what makes life interesting and what makes Dan's column so astute. Everyone should read his column every week.

Blake Harrison College '03

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