CHC’s relationship with North Texas Medical Center, Gainesville, Texas, began in May of 2018, to help advance the hospital on many levels. With CHC’s professional guidance, the Gainesville Hospital District and NTMC continue on a positive path of operational, financial and clinical performance improvement. Below is the perspective from Shane Lee, Gainesville Hospital District Board member, as published in the Gainesville Register, September 7, 2020. 

It has been a while since I have publicly shared my thoughts on our hospital, North Texas Medical Center, and the Gainesville Hospital District. Let us first take a walk back in time a bit as it pertains to our hospital district.

In May 2018, when I first took a seat on the GHD board, the hospital was in the middle of bankruptcy. Bonds needed to be issued to cover the bankruptcy bailout and we had no hard interest rate to understand our true cost of the bonds. Moody and Fitch, the bond rating company, was unwilling to set our final bond rating at that time. They were in need of a better understanding of the future management of the hospital as we had just lost Texoma Medical Center, our hospital management provider from the prior year. My number one goal as a GHD board member was to ensure we would have a financially viable hospital for the foreseeable future, but this was difficult to map out because we were working with a subpar set of financial books that were compounding the poor vision of our already unclear future.

Fast forward to today and I can breathe a bit easier. Two years ago, the GHD board was required to raise the tax rate 5.75 cents to get us out of bankruptcy. With the recent tax rate reduction that was approved by the majority of the GHD board members at the last hospital district meeting, we have been able to lower the tax rate back down three of those cents. This is well ahead of any schedule I could have hoped for back when I joined the GHD board.

Read Shane Lee’s guest column in the Gainesville Register, September 7, 2020.