This is week five of addressing common questions and concerns about Garfield County Hospital District. If you missed any of the first four articles, they can be found East Washingtonian website or the Hospital’s Facebook page. This week we will be discussing hospital management.

One of the most cited problems from rural hospitals around the nation is CEO turnover and GCHD has been no exception. The District has had eight different CEO’s over the last five years including our current leaders. Without consistent leadership it has been difficult for the District to grow or improve and has created hardship for our staff, patients, and community. With each new CEO there is a period for them to get oriented to our operations and then they begin implementing changes they think may help. This has led to inefficient and ineffective strategy as well as repeating of past mistakes.

There have been many changes and decisions made over the last five years by that group of CEOs, some good and some bad. While we cannot take back mistakes and bad decisions, we can promise to do our best not to repeat them and to learn from them. Our current Co-CEOs are dedicated to continued growth and improvement within the Hospital District. We believe in transparency, owning up to our mistakes, and learning from them.

One thing that has helped hold our operations together during the constant change has been our managers group. We have put together an outstanding group of department managers that are always willing to go the extra mile for our facility. Their strong, consistent leadership has seen us through many difficult times.

Garfield County Hospital is a community hospital that is dedicated to serving our community to the best of our ability. We have begun to see some positive changes within our organization come to fruition but there is still more work to be done. We will not be perfect but will continuously strive for improvement. If you have a problem or a question, please tell us so that we can address it. With your support we know we can become an organization our community trusts and is proud of!