Next Tuesday, members the public will have a chance to learn more about their community hospital at the Southwest Health System annual meeting.

Southwest Memorial Hospital, a 61-bed facility in Cortez, is managed by SHS, a non-profit organization operating under a 50-year lease with the Montezuma County Hospital District.

Elections will be held for three board members at the meeting, scheduled for 7 p.m., June 12 at the Cortez Conference Center/Holiday Express (Koko’s). Three incumbent candidates — Charles A. Hubbard, Joan S. Luhman and Chuck McAfee — are running uncontested for three-year terms.

Under SHS bylaws, anyone attending the meeting who is 18 or older and resides in Montezuma County can vote for candidates. But since there are no contested seats, the candidates will automatically be assigned to the nine-person board, and no vote will be necessary.

The annual meeting will also feature reports from the medical staff, CEO Bob Peterson and chief financial officer George Brisson. Officers will be elected by the board, and questions from the audience will also be entertained.

Southwest has experienced rapid change over the last year, and more challenges lie ahead. A $1.3 million ER/physical plant expansion was completed, a rescue-helicopter service came and went, SHS showed a profit for the first time in three years, new services such as home health care and a sleep lab were added, a low-cost community clinic is planned for Mancos, and a new nursing home is planned for construction on hospital district land that will be leased to a private corporation.

Challenges at the taxpayer-owned hospital include lingering physician-recruitment problems that have caused some surgery patients to be diverted to nearby competing hospitals; a lower-than-preferred trauma preparedness level; and the 25-year-old facility needs to be remodeled to accommodate demand for more streamlined outpatient services.

"Financially the hospital is quite healthy," said McAfee. "But we have to be very cognizant of the bottom line because the future will require a lot of capital improvements."

McAfee also noted that Southwest’s management contract, held by Quorum Health Resources, is up for renewal in October, "so we will be looking at that to see what we want from them and to see if there is any overlap of services."

Luhman said that her contributions involved improving community relations through helping to organize weekly newspaper ads.

"Those have provided the community with more information on what the hospital does and its employees, and that is very important here," she said.