Taos Hospital Study Committee – Putting the ‘Community’ back into Community Hospital

The Taos Hospital Study Committee was created for all stakeholders: consumers, patients, the doctors, nurses and staff, administrators and elected officials to plan for their Hospital – a good idea for a hospitals. How this serves as a model for communities to improve patient care.

(Special note: In March, Taos County voted to establish a mill levy primarily for hospital capital needs for a period of four years for Holy Cross Hospital. This effort was a result of over two years of investigating and researching the financial conditions and policy-making at the hospital. This work was conducted by the Taos Community Hospital and Health Care Study Committee.)

Early in 2017, The Candle will begin a series on acute care at New Mexico hospitals with comparisons to hospitals in other states which have achieved Magnet status. There will also be several articles relative to how hospital administrators have hijacked the decision-making relating to appropriate staffing from bed-side nurses who are the people actually responsible for the quality of care patients are supposed to receive. This will be a series that will run throughout 2017.

It is also expected that nurses affiliated with District 1199 NM of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees,* and others, will work with legislators on creating a Patient Safe Staffing Act.  The Candle will report on that legislative proposal as well as others expected to be filed which would establish patient and family advisory councils at all hospitals licensed by the New Mexico Department of Health.

* The author of this article has previously conducted research with District 1199 NM of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees.