Letters to the Editor

Sweetwater Reporter
Letters to the Editor
Written by Staff Reports
Thursday, 02 April 2009

Dear Editor,

I have had the privilege of being the Administrator of Rolling Plains Memorial Hospital for nineteen and a half years. I am retiring on May 3rd. I wanted to thank the community and the Nolan County Hospital District Board for permitting me to serve and to remind everybody of what a great treasure we have in RPMH. I fully understand that it is the hospital staff, the Medical staff, the Volunteers, the Board of Directors and indeed, the members of the community and the loyal patients who support the hospital, who deserve the credit for the great accomplishments at RPMH, not I. If you go to the computer site Healthgrades.com you will see that RPMH ranks first or tied for first in positive patient outcome results for every single disease category among all hospitals in our area of West Texas, regardless of size. If you go to the Federal government site HospitalCompare, you will see similar results, plus on the recently mandated uniform national patient opinion poll, RPMH ranks above the national average in every single category. RPMH is the only smaller non-urban hospital in West Texas that participates in the rigorous accreditation process of the Joint Commission and has scored a "99" in recent inspections. A state-of-the-art Emergency Care Center was added to the hospital and a Physical Therapy and Cardiac Rehabilitation addition was built and all this was done without the need for borrowing or debt. For the past several years the employees of RPMH have by far, been the largest contributors to the Nolan County United Way. RPMH was honored to be chosen as the 24th Best Place to Work in Healthcare in the United States based on an anonymous employee survey of hundreds of hospitals nationwide by Modern Healthcare Magazine. Based on the accomplishments of the hospital, a former Board Chair was recognized by a national hospital journal as the Trustee of the Year for the entire nation. In 2005, RPMH was honored to be voted as the Business of the Year by the Sweetwater Chamber of Commerce. All of these things have been done at the same time, RPMH has levied the lowest tax rate of any Tax District hospital in our area. The hospital provides clearly superior service at a very reasonable cost. Effective May 4th, the Hospital Board has decided that Donna Boatright, MSN, will become your new administrator. This is an excellent choice and I fully expect that the best days for our hospital are ahead of us. Again, thank you for giving me the opportunity to have served the hospital and the community.

Tom Kennedy
Sweetwater