Dilemma: Right vs. Right
Efficiency or Roots?
The Smithfield Consolidated Health Center recently acquired several small hospitals, outpatient services, and other medical facilities in the greater Smithfield, Connecticut, region. It has just announced that it plans to offer a spectrum of social services as well as medical services to local communities. In many cases, the services named are the very same that are currently provided by a number of small community-based agencies within Smithfield.
Lloyd is the health services program officer for the multimillion-dollar Hassenfeffer Foundation, located in Smithfield. The Smithfield Consolidated Health Center and the Women's Wellness Facility have both approached Lloyd with requests to fund a similar social services project. Because of its size and sophistication, Consolidated Health can conduct the project at a lower cost and with greater quality control than the Women's Wellness Facility. Lloyd suspects, however, that Consolidated Health is too large and corporate to really have its finger on the pulse of the communities this project is designed to serve.
The Hassenfeffer Foundation has provided several grants to the Women's Wellness Facility in the past and, although the number of people served by their projects is low, there has never been any impropriety in management of the grants. At the same time, Lloyd realizes that the same amount of money granted to Consolidated Health would provide high-quality services to a larger number of people.
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