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Show Record supports VVMC in improvement efforts In most ways, medical services are different than other services and goods offered by merchants and professionals in Iron County. However, in some very important ways, they certainly aren't, especially in the relationship between economics and services. It is for this reason, and for better general health care, that we at the Record are urging everyone involved doctors, patients, nurses and technicians to support efforts by the Valley View Medical Center administration to upgrade the hospital and the specialists and other medical staff available to the residents of the County. We encourage en-courage them to start supporting the hospital and the doctors, before we no longer have a hospital, but only "a first aid station," as Dr. Ross McNaught described it. We would, in addition, commend Administrator Dahl Gardner and others involved for their efforts in trying to turn around the economic and health care situation at the hospital, in an attempt to provide the residents of Iron County with the best and least expensive care available (see story on page Al). However, he has been quick to point out, and we agree, that without community support the hospital cannot improve and grow. It cannot fill the empty beds that are there now. It cannot attract specialists. It cannot put itself on economically firm footing. So, we urge doctors and patients to help Gardner in every way possible to achieve his goals of bringing additional specialists to Cedar City, a goal he feels will help solve the problems at the WMC. This support means not only helping him get specialists to locate here, but in using those doctors once they arrive, in supporting them in much the same way that we support local merchants. The hospital, in a time of industrial fervor in the County, can provide a very lucrative industry, with help. We encourage Gardner to attract the specialists here, and we encourage the public to accept them and use them once they are here. This in turn will stimulate the economy in Cedar City and Iron County, and, even more importantly, it will provide the specialized health care that the citizens are so much in need of, but now must turn elsewhere for. Finally, without trying to sound ominous, we remind everyone involved of the famous bottom line. The hospital, like any business, must operate in the black, or it will cease to operate. The hospital has to turn around a declining bed-patient ratio, it has to make money or it may no longer be a complete com-plete hospital. Such would certainly be a loss for everyone involved. |