By Mary Alice Murphy

At the Grant County Commission first work session of 2026, Chair Chris Ponce, before everyone saluted the American Flag and the Flag of New Mexico, reminded everyone that it was the 113th anniversary of New Mexico statehood.

During public input, Bruce Ashburn, as state Rep. Luis Terrazas' aide, invited the commissioners and the public to a ribbon cutting on Jan 9 at the offices of Terrazas and state Sen. Gabriel Ramos in offices in the back of First American Bank on Swan Street.

[Editor's Note: You can see a photo and write up of the event at https://www.grantcountybeat.com/news/news-articles/sen-gabriel-ramos-and-rep-luis-terrazas-open-new-offices-010926  .]

Gila Regional Medical Center Board of Trustees Chair Dr. Fred Fox presented the monthly report to the commissioners. "I would like to present a review of last year. During this year, there was a successful transition to a new medical management advisory group."

He said the board engaged a national search firm and appointed a standing committee to work with the firm and they narrowed the many applications to three who appropriately responded in total, and then two remained at the final standing."At that point, we chose Ovation. Shortly thereafter, we negotiated the continued employment of Robert Whitaker as CEO moving from being employed by Health Tech (the former management company) to working for the hospital. He also just recently hired a new chief financial officer."

Fox said the board members continue to take advantage of board trainings by various entities, including the New Mexico Hospital Association and Ovation. Topics include governance, and fiduciary responsibility, as well as goals. As well, the board members speak to community members about their relationship to the GRMC Foundation.

"Gila Regional has improved its financials considerably over the past year," Fox continued. "There's been a total net surplus for the fiscal year 2025 of just over $40 million this year. The financial audit was completed on time and has been submitted to the state. We are awaiting their approval before it's released to the public."

He said the board has a standing committee to address the finances of the hospital. The members meet monthly with the administrative team. Fox also noted that the hospital had added and improved services, including bringing in an interventional radiologist. The hospital also has a sleep lab and a pulmonary clinic

Dr. Stanley Swierzewski, urologist, was recruited and has been seeing patients and performing surgeries. Fox said he has been quite busy.

Another new recruit Dr. Stephanie Leslie, a family physician, was welcomed to the community. Dr. Maximus L'Amour, who returned to the community, is in surgical services, as is Dr. Wendler, who was contemplating retirement, but agreed to provide services to the hospital.

Fox noted that two new physician assistants recently joined the Cardiology Clinic—Tiffany Maxey and Clifton Rogers.

"In respect to oncology, the demand for increased hours has resulted in increased time from Dr. Durando," Fox tcontinued.

He said changes in federal support for public insurance and the increasing health care costs nationally, as well as within the state and locally, will challenge the hospital. "In addition to continuing to address retention and recruitment of physicians, we believe adding more services would be appropriate for our community in primary and specialty areas. We also have to address the aging physical plant of the hospital."

Fox said he also wanted to address the comment last month at the Grant County Commission meeting when  Ponce voiced that the Board of Trustees was getting in the weeds. "I want to speak about my colleagues on the board, these six other members, now five since the sad passing of Javier Salas, who was a essential part of the board. The board members reside in a variety of Grant County locations and communities, and they bring a vast understanding of those diverse areas. Most of the board members have lived here for many decades. They have skills, knowledge and experience in a variety of disciplines. They are volunteers and donate their time and energy. They have their overriding responsibilities of oversight, function and performance. To the hospital, they bring insight, bringing their own experience and foresight, looking to the future needs. These members work hard. They ask probing and appropriate questions, they communicate their own and their neighbors' concerns, and they think critically and appropriately. I believe they do a good job and that they act ethically and in the best interest of the hospital and the community. And I believe that criticism that they were in the weeds was not accurate."

District 3 Commissioner Nancy Stephens said: "Thank you, Dr. Fox for the report. I know that you personally are very well respected in the community, and I want to thank you for your continued service and leadership on the board of trustees. Thank you also for your regular reporting to the commission. I find it very valuable and consistent. I think that we are, as a community, really fortunate to have a publicly-owned hospital. And it hasn't been so long ago that our hospital was in a lot of trouble, and I think the Board of Trustees has been instrumental in helping to turn that around, as evidenced by the financial reports and community reports. I appreciate that the hospital held so many public meetings this past year, and I also appreciate your attention to the roles and responsibilities and trying to foster a relationship of trust in the community. And so thank you for your partnership."

Fox replied: "Thank you very much for those comments. I appreciate what you said about me, but I do want to say that I'm just one person on that board. I believe that the board functions well as part of a much broader collaboration in the community. Yes, the hospital was in dire financial straits, as this county commission was well aware, and they helped turn it around through a lot of effort by number of people and groups, including the past county commissioners, past management company, individuals in the community and our current board. It was a broad based collaboration that resulted in that, and I think that it's that collaboration and concern that makes our hospital good, with appropriate service and something to be proud of."

The next presentation came from Emma Eileen McKinney, the co-ordinator of the Grant County Community Health Council.

McKinney began by speaking about the last quarter of calendar year 2025, which she said was a big one for the Grant County Community Health Council. "I was able to obtain two additional mental health certifications to implement trainings in our community, one for the ABC (Ask, Be Present Connect) suicide prevention module, which was based on a national program, but developed in New Mexico at aSanta Fe Community College, and so has pieces of it that are culturally relevant to our New Mexico communities, and then also an adult mental health first aid trainer certification, and that's really exciting, because we're going to be having adult mental health first aid trainings at Gila Regional Medical Center every month of 2026. In this next year, we'll have 12 full day trainings for those at Gila Regional Medical Center to be trained in this mental health first aid. and it will be open to the public if all of the slots for the trainings are not filled by Gila Regional Medical Center employees. So we will be distributing sign up links as they become available. We hold our monthly Grant County Community Health Council meetings with senior services as a recurring agenda item, as well as updates from Crystal, who is the New Mexico Non-Metro Area Agency on Aging representative for our region, helping explain her role, as well as distributing information from her and hoping to find her an alternate so that she can more consistently make it to all of the things that she wants to make it to."

She said they council members have been continuing work on the transportation resource mapping initiative, as well as local food systems and sustainability feeding of the community.

The council is staying updated on Senate Bill 3, the behavioral health reform and Investment Act. "As well, we also had the United Way of Southwest New Mexico come and train the Health Council on ALICE (asset limited, income constrained and employed) populations, who oftentimes don't qualify for specific benefits, but are still struggling financially. And then, of course, we have lots of networking and collaboration between all of the different organizations and individuals that attend the meetings."

McKinney said the transportation, resource mapping initiative has been fun, and "I feel like I've learned a lot, and it's been, in some ways, a stretch for me that I've been excited to grow into." She presented an updated timeline, because the project has grown and taken shape with lots of community input, and because of that expansion, as well as expansion in her duties, outside of the transportation resource mapping initiative, things are pushed back a little bit,." I apologize for misrepresenting the timeline initially, and I thank you so much for your grace and patience as we work on this monumental task."

At the Jan. 25, Health Council meeting, she said they will have printed versions of the resource guide in order to test the QR codes together and also phone readability. "Accessibility is something that's really important to us. So for those of you who have a smartphone, you can take pictures of documents and it'll read it out loud to you. These are things that I have to rely on the Health Council and the community for testing those QR codes and screen reader accessibility."

The council is also working on sort of a two-track survey of community transportation needs, with questions such as "Do you own a vehicle, or do you not own a vehicle? And if you do own a vehicle, how you get into town when it needs to be in the shop? What would you do if you couldn't upkeep your vehicle, things like that. For those who don't have vehicles, how do you currently get into town? How often do you get into town? How often would you like to get into town? And would you be interested in more public transportation resources from these areas?"

"Once we have collected that information, then we will have updated drafts in February, March and April. We'll be hosting focus groups in the different areas of the county, just to have more public eyes on it before May, when we hope to have the resource guide launched in its final form."

She noted that another really big event for the Health Council this last quarter was the Mimbres Valley Health Fair, which has been run by Chris DeBolt for many, many years. "This year, she really took me under her wing as sort of as her apprentice, so that in years going forward, this can be a Grant County Community Health Council project, and, as in previous years, Western New Mexico University nursing students came and gave vaccines and many other community service organizations distributed materials around health and safety."

Among other community events, the Health Council participated in, they provided Narcan trainings at the Recovery Management Center's recovery day celebration and ice cream social. "We also hosted the UNM center for development and disability for a training on their services available for people with autism and intellectual and developmental disabilities. "It was really such a pleasure to have that team with us and to really strengthen the trainings and resource sharings around these populations that are often so overlooked. Then we also hosted an event called Rise Together, which was a teen safety event focused on substance misuse and violence prevention. We also provided Narcan trainings at that event."

McKinney said the council has been working closely with the schools, and particularly the school health advisory councils for both the Cobre and Silver school districts, and part of that has been providing technical assistance in order to move these meetings into a hybrid format, which makes it easier for people to attend, people with families, people with jobs, people who are busy and can't make it in person, and then again, increasing that accessibility to those meetings. "And in the school health advisory council, we have been focusing a lot on digital safety, safety on the internet, as well as substance misuse prevention. Those have been our main areas."

"Our region six will have an SB3 enhanced sequential intercept mapping (E-SIM)workshop in Deming, March, 24 25th and 26th, that's a Tuesday, Wednesday and a Thursday, from 8am to 5pm at the Mimbres Valley Special Events Center at 2300 East Pine Street in Deming. And so if you're interested in helping us engage in regional behavioral health planning, we really hope to see you there. And the next Health Council meeting is Thursday, January 15, with a link for the virtual option." It will take place at the Grant County Veterans Memorial Business and Conference Center.If you have any questions, comments, concerns, I'm always happy to hear them. You can call, text or email. I'm really interested in making sure that we're implementing all of the programming that you are interested in."

District 2 Commissioner Eloy Medina thanked her for her presentation. "A few years ago, the Health Council was involved in transport services of people that couldn't get to their doctor's appointments, and to pick up medication and so forth. Are you guys getting back into any of that?Do you guys have any ability to that? Because I know at that point, it was grant funded, and right now, there's a pretty big need for those type of services, to take people to the doctor's offices. For those long term transporters, they can't necessarily do it. Is Could we revisit that option? "

McKinney replied: "So currently, if that is not something that we are doing in terms of health council members ourselves picking up medications and transporting people. In terms of whether or not it's in the realm of possibility, I'll check with my team. If it's something that we've done before, then maybe it's something we can do again. And if grants are available, grant writing and things like that are always something I'm interested in. And there is absolutely a big need for that, and so trying to coordinate how that would look, and all of the insurance aspects and things like that. You know, working with HMS and seeing sort of like the various steps that it has taken for them to relaunch their patient transportation program definitely has humbled me in regards of how much work is involved in making sure that people are safe with transporting them in vehicles. But I will ask my higher ups and see if that's something that's in the realm of possibility. And if it is, we'll start looking into grants."

Medina said the the time, "the partnership was based out of the EMS department, so I'm asking if there's a possibility of a grant funding. We used to use people that just had a driver's license, and it was on a volunteer basis. Oh, they got paid."

McKinney asked if she could email him and ask to get a little bit more detail about that history and how it worked. "Because that sounds really awesome and innovative, and it has been done before."

Stphens asked aboutSenate Bill 3 and the March meetings. "What do you? Who do you see as the target audience for that meeting, and then, I guess, just to clarify your role as a partner in the process in designing the Tri-County Regional behavioral health plan."

McKinney clarified that it is one workshop over three days, but they will be recorded and transcribed. The target audience is providers, prescribers, social service organizations, business owners, schools, law enforcement, detention center staff and people and families with lived experience of mental health concerns. "In terms of my role, the lead entity is Luna County, but I am on the Planning Council for this workshop, and so in terms of developing the plan, we really want the plan to be community informed, from everyone who has a stake, like people with lived experience to people who are engaging in treatment and people who are engaging in law enforcement, and so I share expertise when I can. I share resources and share as much labor as I can in terms of planning and ensuring that we have the right people at the table and things like that, but it really is a whole community effort."

The next portion of the meeting will address county reports.