Editorials

HMS Board of Directors
Statement Regarding May 3 Provider Letter
May 20, 2025

This statement is issued by the HMS Board of Directors following our review of a letter dated May 3, 2025, signed by several healthcare practitioners. The letter raised concerns about HMS's leadership and suggested that the current administration is contributing to a decline in healthcare services across Grant and Hidalgo counties.

The Board takes all feedback seriously - particularly concerns related to patient care. As always, such concerns are subject to appropriate internal review. However, we want to emphasize the following:

Published with permission from Piñon Post at https://pinonpost.com/summer-is-coming-and-so-are-higher-pnm-rates-under-nms-green-new-deal/ 

Summer is coming—and so are higher PNM rates under NM’s Green New Deal

By Piñon Post / May 16, 2025 / New Mexico, News, Politics

New Mexico residents served by Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM) will soon pay more for electricity, following the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission (PRC) approval of a phased rate increase. As reported by KOAT News 7, the average residential customer will see their monthly bill rise by $6.23, split between two increases—one in July 2025 and another in April 2026.

Dear Ms. Acosta, Board Chairwoman Hidalgo Medical Services (HMS) and HMS Board of Directors (BOD),

We appreciate your response to our letter, received on 05/07/2025.

As stated in our letter, we are happy to meet with any board member on a 1:1 basis to discuss our concerns and have a frank and open dialogue as schedules allow. Additionally, several of us intend to meet with the BOD after your scheduled BOD meeting on 05/22/2025 in Lordsburg.

However, as we are sure you can appreciate, many of us are busy clinicians and cannot attend in-person meetings during the middle of the day. To avoid adversely impacting patient care and allow for full participation and an open discussion, we request consideration of the following alternative.

Washington, D.C., May 15, 2025) – U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins published a joint opinion piece in the New York Times pushing for work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). She was joined in writing the opinion piece by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz, and Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner.

“Work requirements will also give new life to America’s welfare programs, which are breaking under the weight of misplaced priorities. Our policy is reasonable and will protect welfare for the truly needy while improving the trajectory of millions of families — and of our federal government,” Secretary Rollins, Secretary Kennedy, Administrator Oz, and Secretary Turner wrote. “At the Departments of Agriculture, Health and Human Services and Housing and Urban Development, we are ready to implement work requirements. As we do so, we will work hand in hand with Congress, states, communities and individuals to make this vision a permanent reality. The benefits are clear: stronger economies and a renewed sense of purpose for millions of Americans.”

By David Hampton

 The New Mexico Environment Department is currently inviting public input on a new “heat” regulation. You can comment on the project at the NMED website through May 30, 2025: EIB 25-11 (R) - Proposed New Regulation, 11.5.7 NMAC - Heat Illness and Injury Prevention. 

Among the provisions contained in the proposed regulation is the requirement that employers must conduct time consuming heat exposure assessments when the heat index meets or exceeds just 80°F. 

It goes without saying that 80 degrees is a common temperature for nearly any New Mexican to work outside in for half the year or more. And that doesn’t include those working indoors at grills and other kitchen environments. It is also common for construction sites to not have functioning HVAC systems until they are nearly open.

By Ruben Leyva

The train carried many Apaches east, but not all of them went. Some stayed behind in the rocks, canyons, and wind, where memory and spirit still moved. The story of the Gila Apache, known administratively as the Chihene Nde Nation, is one such tale. Their continued presence in their ancestral homelands affirms survival, but not without cost.

One enduring form of exclusion facing the Gila Apache is the ongoing denial of authenticity—a kind of erasure rooted not in their absence but in the dominance of a single Chiricahua narrative and a widespread lack of public knowledge about those who have continued their culture in secrecy, fearing deportation.
Though ancestrally tied to the Chiricahua Apache prisoners of war taken to Florida, Alabama, and Oklahoma, the Gila Apache have remained in their ancestral territory, hidden yet resilient. They are a politically distinct people whose culture was never extinguished, only overlooked—hidden in plain sight.

[Editor's Note: The editor removed this content as  it violated the Beat's policy of not posting editorials and letters to the editor without attribution.

Similar content can be found at the letter previously sent and signed by practitioners to the Hidalgo Medical Services Board. It can be read at https://www.grantcountybeat.com/editorials/editorial/letter-of-no-confidence-to-hms-board-of-directors ]

May 3, 2025

Hidalgo Medical Services Board
530 De Moss St
Lordsburg, NM 88045

Subject: No Confidence in Leadership

Dear Hidalgo Medical Services Board of Directors,

On behalf of concerned practitioners in the community and past practitioners employed by Hidalgo Medical Services (HMS), we write to formally express our deep concern regarding the ongoing instability within HMS and to declare no confidence in its current senior leadership, specifically its CEO.