The Aspen Valley Hospital board is being driven by the dynamos that are John Sarpa and John Jellinek. Now in their sixth year on the board, the pair have brought the hospital out of the red, hired a new CEO and put forward an ambitious redevelopment plan for the hospital.
In 2005 the board appointed attorney Lee Schumacher to fill the seat left open by Elaine Gerson, who stepped down to take the position as the hospital’s in-house attorney.
The two remaining hospital board seats have been filled for the last four years by two competent doctors. We’d like to see this continue, and we think doctors Barry Mink and Mindy Nagle are good choices to fill those seats.
Dr. Greg Balko, an emergency room physician at AVH, is not running for re-election. There was no doubt he was representing the best interests of the hospital staff as a board member, but he also showed he was quite capable of making decisions about the hospital in its various contexts as a publicly funded essential community facility and a large local employer.
Dr. Barry Mink, who is seeking to retain his seat on the board after one term, has also served the hospital well. First, he knows patients. A specialist in internal medicine, he’s been treating Aspenites since the mid-1970s and he seems to have a good sense of how things are going at the hospital. Second, he knows himself, what he thinks, and what he believes is good for the hospital. We trust him. And we think he should serve another term on the hospital board.
We also think another medical professional should take the seat held by Dr. Balko to balance out the perspectives and experience of the developer, the venture capitalist and the attorney who will be on the board for at least the next two years. They are a powerful trio — and their vision and decision making have benefited the hospital and likely will in the future — but having working doctors on the board provides a solid voice for hospital staffers.
In addition to Dr. Mink, there are two candidates running with medical backgrounds, Dr. Mindy Nagle and Deborah Hutchinson.
Hutchinson knows the hospital, as she was born in Aspen and has been a paramedic for 22 years. She also runs her own pet care business.
Both Hutchinson and Nagle are good candidates.
But Dr. Balko approached Dr. Nagle and asked her to run for his seat. Given our respect for Dr. Balko, we give that a lot of weight.
And we like the fact that she is a busy obstetrician-gynecologist, which puts her in touch with a lot of patients who end up under the hospital’s roof, and that she has two years experience as the vice president of the hospital’s Medical Executive Committee.
The hospital board has momentum. They’ve got Sarpa, Jellinek and Schumacher working hard to take the hospital into its next stage. Having two doctors aboard to keep their eyes on the quality of patient care is a good thing.
In the AVH board of directors election, vote for doctors Barry Mink and Mindy Nagle.