Whatever new health care creature is brought forth by the board formed to merge Kaleida Health and the Erie County Medical Center — an entity that doesn’t even have a name yet — somebody isn’t going to like it. That is the very practical reason why that board ought to be meeting in public and making the whole awkward process as open as possible.

We could argue for the people’s right to know, adherence to the New York State Freedom of Information Law and the principle of spending public money in a public process. But the first point is that if the merger of Buffalo’s two largest health care providers were easy, it would have been done already. If the issue weren’t fraught with turf, costs, personalities, contracts, emotions and responsibilities, the state health commissioner wouldn’t have had to step in and name the new board when the existing Kaleida and ECMC boards couldn’t get their act together.

There is more to this merger than the creation of a new board and the hiring of a new CEO. There are two corporate cultures to mesh, two salary structures to even out and two histories of debts and fixed costs to apportion — as well as many missions, habits, buildings, wards and very expensive machines to be moved, removed or repurposed.

The likelihood that all that can be done without criticism, hurt feelings or implications of ulterior motives is slim indeed. And it gets even slimmer every time the new board or any subdivision thereof meets in private.

Erie County Comptroller Mark C. Poloncarz is right to raise this concern, though his call for formal representation from the county on the board is of less value. We don’t need another set of interests with a guaranteed seat at the table. Open the process, and the county can weigh in along with everyone else.

The new board has now met twice, both times behind closed doors. Members were advised by the New York State Health Department that doing so was legal, at least in the board’s organizational phase, because so far the board doesn’t even exist as a legal entity. Technically, until a new corporation is formed, it’s just a bunch of folks sitting around talking.

But it is a bunch of folks with a lot of power sitting around talking about the future of health care in Erie County, how it might best be provided, by whom and at what cost. Whichever side considers itself the loser in the process, or even fears that it might lose something it now has in terms of pay, prestige or quality of care, is going to be thumping the drum for a change of policy, probably after it’s too late to do anything but file a lawsuit.

Better the whole process be as transparent and understandable as humanly possible. It won’t be perfect, but at least folks will have a chance to understand how we got here.

Copyright 2007 - The Buffalo News