Some residents in Charlotte’s Elizabeth neighborhood are complaining about the way Atrium Health discharges patients from the emergency room at Mercy Hospital. According to The Charlotte Ledger business newsletter, residents who live near the hospital have reported that some patients, once released, have then gone on to vandalize their homes and also expose themselves. They want Atrium to do something about it.
“If you look at the layout of it, the entrance to the emergency room is right on Fifth Street, which is a residential street, and the hospital has apparently been releasing patients from the emergency room, which is open 24 hours,” The Ledger’s Tony Mecia told WFAE “Morning Edition” host Marshall Terry on this week’s BizWorthy. “What the neighborhood would like is for the hospital to start releasing the patients at the main entrance, which is closer by Randolph Road, where there aren't as many houses and where there's a bus stop.”
Mecia says it might not be that simple.
“Atrium says it wants to treat everybody fairly and treat everybody with compassion, and they just can’t start singling out people not to release,” Mecia said. “It’s a thorny issue.”
You can listen to the full conversation above. Here are two other big topics in this week’s BizWorthy:
- NBCUniversal reportedly cut 60 jobs in Charlotte. NBC News has a big presence in the region and has a local operation near Charlotte Douglas International Airport that connects local affiliates around the country with network footage and vice versa. “A lot of TV stations are now owned by larger and larger companies,” Mecia said. “They're not small, family-owned operations, so they have kind of their own networks of ownership and maybe don't need quite as many people servicing their news operations the way that they did in the past.”
- A big development project planned for an area just off Central Avenue in Charlotte’s Plaza Midwood neighborhood is getting pushback from residents. Plans call for nearly 400 apartments, a mid-rise office tower and a small park, among other things. “A lot of people said, ‘Hey, this looks just like South End, Plaza Midwood is going to lose its charm, that sort of thing,’” Mecia said of the reaction on social media. “This is an argument that’s happening all over the city … where you’re seeing a lot of apartment complexes come up and there’s this tension between growth and trying to hang onto an area’s character.”
Listen to the audio to hear the full conversation, and you can catch up on past installments of BizWorthy here.
