Published: June 30, 2008 01:39 pm            

Letter to the Editor, June 29, 2008

Dear Editor:

It was clear by the 1970s that our Valley View Hospital would have to be replaced.

The structure had served the community well for many years, but now she was well past her prime. The Valley View Hospital board of directors made the decision to go forward with a new hospital plant, one that would greatly enhance the health care services available to the people of Ada and the surrounding area.

When the “new” Valley View Regional Hospital was built 25 years ago, we took a giant step into modern community health care. The new facility offered the foundation for expanded services, new specialties and the latest equipment.

Coinciding almost precisely with the completion of the new Valley View was the beginning of one of the worst recessions in Oklahoma history. The price of oil dropped to single digits, banks failed, businesses closed, people moved away. Our economy gasped for air, but we made it through a tremendously trying decade.

Of course, local retail sales took a pounding. The bonds sold to fund the new hospital were backed by a local one-cent tax on sales. As those collections continued to drop, the hospital scrambled and satisfied the bondholders by supplementing sales tax collections with income from hospital operations.

Valley View made it through! Valley View is resilient, and she weathered the storm thanks to the committed and loyal people who make up the Valley View staff of professionals.

The hospital refinanced the bonds in 1996, dropping the interest rate from 10 percent to 6 percent. Those bonds, scheduled to be retired in 2014, are now projected to be retired in 2012.

We read with interest the Ada Evening News editorial of June 10. Not much has been written about Valley View history over the past decade, and we appreciate Ada Evening News publisher Lone Beasley’s grasp of the subject matter.

Mr. Beasley wrote, in part, “…kudos are due those in 1983 who had the vision to see a community can exist without many things, but will never be vibrant and viable without a hospital. It is a good thing the bond is finally being paid off, but in the end a penny tax to help finance a hospital is a small price to pay.”

Mr. Beasley is kind to extend congratulations to the board, but that is not the reason we were so impressed with what he wrote. We believe, as does the writer, that our community retains its vibrancy, its spirit and its health hand-in-hand with its partner, Valley View Regional Hospital.

Our mission at Valley View is simply to provide outstanding health care to the people we serve – the people of Ada, Pontotoc County and the surrounding area. We are a community hospital and, as such, we never turn anyone away. We accept any and all of our citizens. The professionals who work at Valley View, who are completely dedicated to the hospital and the patients they serve, give all they have to heal them.

Yes, it was a tough stretch from 1983, when the hospital was built, through 1996, when the bonds were refinanced at a much lower rate. And the people of Valley View never wavered in their commitment to the healing arts, and to the people of our community.

American health care in the modern era is extremely challenging, and always changing. We believe we are blessed to have a community hospital dedicated to high quality medical care – for all the people. And though it wasn’t without some pain, we are doubly blessed to have the modern facility that houses Valley View.

Thank you to our outstanding nurses, physicians, technicians, administrators, managers and support staff who make Valley View Regional Hospital so uniquely focused on excellent health care.

And thank you to the people of Ada, Pontotoc County and the surrounding area who have supported Valley View, utilized her professionals and discovered healing within her walls.

Carlton Tilley

Chairman, Board of Directors

        

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