To the Editor:

I live in Woods Hole, and am currently recovering from surgery. I would certainly be the last person to want any limitations on services within the hospital that carried out this surgery and took care of my immediate recovery requirements. With healthcare equity in mind, I would like to respond to Martha’s Vineyard Hospital healthcare management’s support of the 5:30 am ferry out of Woods Hole. This support was reported at a recent public meeting with the Steamship Authority management. Steamship management claimed on July 18 that the M.V. Hospital’s support was critical to retaining the 5:30 am run. I do not agree with this conclusion.

If M.V. Hospital has concern for people on the Vineyard, why not have equal concern for the people along the mainland freight and transportation corridor? Taking a position against the consequences of the 5:30 am ferry out of Woods Hole makes sense. There is a lot of literature available about both the long-term and even short-term impact of sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation is not a small matter. Ask anyone who does not sleep well to begin with, no matter the reasons.

There is irony in the M.V. Hospital management wanting to keep the 5:30 am ferry to the Vineyard while underestimating the sleep deprivation that has gone on since around 2012–13 with the start of the 5:30 am ferry out of Woods Hole to the Vineyard. Sleep deprivation has been reported along the route from North Falmouth to Woods Hole. Several hundred residents are impacted. People along the mainland transport corridor have been asking for the 5:30 am ferry to be moved back 30 minutes, to 6 am. I would think anyone working in the healthcare sector would be especially concerned for all of these mainland individuals. Healthcare workers could also raise this point to SSA management, and to those who ship goods or provide services.

While we all want our hospitals to be prepared for any patient and any emergency, I believe there is considerable flexibility throughout the day as to the timing for the delivery of goods and services.

Surely tradespeople and truckers can delay their arrival on the Vineyard by 30 minutes for a good cause. Consider making deliveries later in the day, to meet the next day’s supply needs. I have heard this suggestion from a sensible trucker at one of the early public meetings with the SSA at which the local community yet again protested the early morning disruption. It is time for truckers and tradespeople to be sensitive to the needs of a larger community.

Health-responsive decisions by the SSA management would be a great step forward for residents along the Vineyard-bound Cape corridor and for the Woods Hole terminal area. Consider, for example, establishing a hospital shuttle in Falmouth and on the Vineyard, if hospital staff need to get to the 6 am ferry or a later shuttle to and from the M.V. Hospital site. A shuttle would in my view be a savvy health investment. A shuttle also could be set up to an early passenger boat from Falmouth harbor.

For the next discussion of the 5:30 am boat schedule in the 2024–25 season, I would request that all parties take seriously the well-established negative impact of sleep deprivation along our local residential transportation corridors. How could the framers of the Enabling Act have fully comprehended the long-term impact of the SSA board of governors’ voting structure that is weighted toward the two island communities (Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, 35 percent each, and Woods Hole, Hyannis, and New Bedford, 10 percent each).

Healthcare equity definitely means a fair accommodation for the benefit of the maximum number of people. While the Steamship Authority may be semi-autonomous, the SSA is still an agency of the commonwealth, which is supposed to serve all of us well.

 

Suzanne Kuffler

Woods Hole