The fight for your eyesight

Most people take their vision for granted — until they encounter an emergency and every minute before surgery matters.

Quick access to an operating room can mean the difference between blindness and sight. Hospital consolidation has left Boston with fewer operating room spaces to serve patients, including those with eye emergencies. People are instead being treated at ambulatory surgery centers (ASC) that have limited hours and little flexibility to accommodate emergencies.

Medicare reimburses ASCs at the same rate, whether surgery is an emergency or not. As a result, they usually prioritize non-urgent procedures like colonoscopies that are scheduled far in advance and take place during regular hours. That makes it increasingly difficult for retina specialists to secure space in an emergency. So difficult, in fact, that my own colleagues frequently ask me to find them operating room space at a hospital where I kept privileges and can be a lifeline.

Operating room space shouldn’t be an issue when someone’s eyesight is on the line. Senators Markey and Warren, and the entire Massachusetts congressional delegation, need to tell Medicare officials to pay ASCs premium rates for emergency procedures.

Andre J. Witkin, MD

Boston

Diana DiZoglio

I just read in your letter to the editor by Paul Baranofsky Feb. 1,  on Diana DiZoglio for governor of Massachusetts. What a great read!  What a wonderful idea. She can be trusted by the people of Massachusetts to work for them and look after our state.

Ray O’Brien

Medford

Homeless deaths

It was only a matter of time before homeless folks would die on the streets of the “city that never sleeps”  (“Mamdani’s homeless policy turns deadly,” Boston Herald, Feb. 2). Mayor Mamdani has stated the homeless will not be forced off the streets. I guess he meant what he said. Following the Arctic cold and a major snow storm, 14 New York residents already reportedly froze to death. Most of them apparently homeless.

I so agree with many of  the mayor’s critics, such as former NY lieutenant governor Betsy McCaughey. Mamdani didn’t do close to enough getting the homeless out of frigid outdoor conditions and into shelters. As someone who worked 40 years as both a mental health counselor and a police officer for the Metro Boston Area Department of Mental Health, I often knew clients who died outside in the cold despite numerous attempts by staff, but when the “deinstitutionalization” policies took hold in the mid-1970s,  it only increased the number of folks who chose the risk of death on the streets over a warm bed.

Sal Giarratani

East Boston