Celebration as $4 Million Milestone Met While Raising Money for New SoHum Hospital
A crowd of supporters at SoHum Health’s Celebration. To the right is SoHum Health’s Mobil Medical Health van that can take medical care to remote areas of this rural area.[Photos all by Kym Kemp]
Ross Huber, boardmember of the SoHum Health Foundation, listens as Second District Supervisor Michelle Bushnell talks about the importance of a new hospital.
Humboldt County Second District Supervisor Michelle Bushnell spoke to the windblown but cheerful crowd noting the importance of the new hospital in creating a good quality of life for locals. She pointed out that along with schools, hospitals were important factors in people’s choices of where to live. “People move to an area for schools,” she said. “People stay in an area for the hospital.”
Donors, including Steve Dazey who has pledged $1,000,000 to the efforts, were given kudos at the event. But, Kent Scown, Chief Operations Officer, noted in particular that a large amount of donations came from over 60 members of the hospital workforce. “Staff has given in excess of $100,000,” he proudly told the crowd which broke out in applause.
A board naming the donors greeted those arriving at the breezy event.
Matt Rees, CEO of SoHum Health, noted to the assembled community members that most of the fundraising has been done under adverse circumstances. He remembered sitting in his office soon after COVID lockdowns were announced and knowing the stock market was tumbling wondering how they could meet their fundraising goals. “We have been able to accomplish more than I ever expected,” he said thanking the community.
At the end of the event in a rousing speech, Hino-Bourassa toasted the crowd noting, “We are not a wealthy community but we are making it happen one donation at a time.”
Donations can be made here.
Please note that this reporter is married to SoHum Health boardmember
, Kevin Church.
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Fundraising For Local Hospitals, While Small Businesses Suffer And The Ukrainian people get put first.
The level of corruption we put up with is sad….local , state, national.
58 billion could be better spent here.
What if we convinced Putin to invade Humboldt?
Are we really that masochistic to not want to deal with the problem?
A remarkable reason to party…
SHCHD is pretty famous for saying things that are not precisely true, and all are to remember that $2.7 Million was handed to SoHum Health cowboys to “do what you will” with…
This amazing handout from the CARES Act may actually entitle your erstwhile Administrators to build the thing, but I am awaiting the application of the funds and the outcome…
They have been talking about this for over a decade, so let’s see the thing!
Even I, a former employee, made a donation.
I have to say, when the recent Board Chair was open, apparently they brought Barbara Truitt back from “retirement”.
In my opinion, this is a great example of SoHum Health’s complete inability to move forward as an organization…
Oh, for heaven’s sake. To be clear, Barbara is not the chair. She is on the board.
You sound like socialist commie and expect free shi*. from your government. Capitalism is the greatest system in the world., my petroleum stocks are thriving.
Even small hospitals cost 50-75 million dollars.
Thank you for pointing this out.
In SoHum everything costs double, due to the shipping costs and the mileage the contractors will charge you…
Even Matt Rees charges 2-3 times what his services are worth, plus mileage and costs for vehicle.
This organization may eventually possess a new building, a “micro-hospital”, if you will, but they have underestimated the costs considerably, IMO…
This fact paired with SHCHD’s remarkable ability to waste resources on overpriced Administrators, Geriatric Board-members, ridiculous elections, and by hiring contractors and travelers for many purposes adds up to a high probability of a down-sized facility containing only basic services…
Good luck, and I will be watching…
Wait. Ms Kemp is married to a Board Member?
If this was a planned parenthood clinic it would have been built yesterday
Probably.
They are a national organization that has huge financial support from millions of people. Ain’t it great?
It IS actually they perform many needed services!!!
Are white people even having sex anymore?
No need for PP in that regard😉
However,
a hospital to take care of the aging revolutionaries of the black market seems needed..
And a nice park to walk in nearby to talk with friends relatives in stressful times
Won’t SoHum population cut in half with collapsing cannabis industry so wouldn’t downsized hospital, really an ER to stabilize patients before transport to Eureka, be right sized and more affordable?
I’ll share one of my bracelets with him…maybe it will help his geriatric bones…
I have one his size ready!
Corrine and Barbara, together again!
Blessings for your husband, and I meant a “seat” on the Board, not “chairman”…
Barbara “retired” and ran the foundation for awhile, and I always found her personable…
I am glad that some new blood is with her, and I will continue to recommend this facility be “right sized” as a Clinic, Urgent Care, Pharmacy, and Women’s Health facility. A SNF is obviously necessary and an anchor of the business.
Didn’t the veterans hall cost something like 2.5-3 mill?
Oh my goodness. No good deed goes unpunished. Do any of you commenters even live here? If not, which I suspect, get the hell out of our business. Except for the wind it was a nice event. They’re working very hard. How dare you say we don’t need a hospital? We do! You guys are such whiners. And so unrealistic. It’s a major accomplishment on a long journey. It was fun to finally see old friends, hear the Town Band again and just get together after covid has kept us apart.
Bunny, why do you need to live “here” and where is “here”, to make comments and ask questions? Then you name-call anyone who has comments as “whiners”? All I want to know; how can the new hospital justify using 5,000,000 gallons of water per year, water the river cannot provide. On top of using the old hospital building for a SNIF, using another significant amount of water per year, on top of the new hospital. How will the hospital district deal with less and less water in the South Fork Eel? Before the new hospital is built, this subject of water use should be address by the Healthcare District. Or, you could have a nice new shinny hospital without water to operate it in the summer and late fall!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sZ9OrwnoKc0kcw-HXq49GwtFZCC8VmKM/view?usp=sharing
District Hospitals
are owned by the people in the district, who pay taxes to support it.
If “living” in the District counted for anything, perhaps you could ask your CEO to “get the hell out”, since he lives in Fortuna…
I often say about the President of the United States, “he was lucky/unlucky enough to be President at his time in history…”
Same for Matt Rees: He was able to “jump the line” for his COVID Vaccine, and then again, he wanted to finance the crap out of “The New Hospital” with the USDA option, and then, *POOF*, Magic COVID dollars appeared and he started the “Donate” program…
All I can say, is a “pledge” and a “donation” are two different things, but some of us made PayPal donations, like myself, a simple hick from Yuba City who once made the error of stumbling into Jerold Phelps Hospital, just to check it out…
“Hmmmmm”, I said, “there’s a Blue Sign on the Highway, but how could THAT be a Hospital?”
Next thing I know, they said “we got one that’s sober and breathing, let’s make him the Manager”…
Strange how things go!
I have a friend from College, who ended up working for the Atherton Police Department… Her job was to drive around Atherton and enforce all the CC&R’s and picayune local ordinances, like, “No Pickups can be parked in sight of the street” etc…
It seems to me like either Garberville should post the idiomatic “rules” for the area, like, “if you don’t like it, get the hell out!”, etc…
Either that, or make it a “Gated Community”, only lock the gate from the outside…
I think you get my meaning, but remember, you can take the boy out of Garberville, but you will never get the Garberville, out of the boy…
Or as we say in Yuba City: “Eat Prunes, you bastards”….
My thoughts, exactly. Bunch of crybabies. Ugh! Taking a piss on positive news is the way to keep negative thoughts alive. Sheesh!
Does anyone who leaves a comment at RHBB actually respond to the article rather than using it as an excuse to revisit their hobby horse grievances, which often have little or nothing to do with the subject of the story? Every time I visit the clinic I see visible signs of improvement. As for the residence of the chief administrator, why would anyone with such professional qualifications want to locate a family and school age children in Southern Humboldt, even if they could find an affordable place to buy?
Maybe they simply don’t want to live in a place without quality health care.
I can only speak from my own experience. I’ve been visiting the clinic for decades and have seen many practitioners there beginning with Jerrold Phelps himself, and I have never received what I considered less than good quality healthcare. With one exception, an unacceptable visit to the ER a few years ago. I complained to Mr. Rees via email, and the doctor who treated me was gone for good the next day. Not only because of my complaint I’m sure, but still, the only exception to decades of visits was dealt with appropriately.
Excuse me Mr Finch, and I remind you that I donated to this project, but, you are to be reminded that hundreds, literally hundreds of “severed employees”, including Harry Jasper himself, probably provided and attended those services you laud…
This evil organization says it has 60 or so employees, but if you look at the current photo on their website, only a tiny fraction of the current employees were there 10 years ago…
For you can build a new building without changing anything at all about the operation of the organization!
A hospital is the people working inside, not the friggin shell…
I tried it, working there, and it was educational, and I am more sanguine about it following 5 years of retirement, but, if you get out your microscope, you will still find Kent Scown, and Dr Michael Newdow… Not the exact best and probably two of the worst actors in a continuous and silly exercise in corruption and incompetence supported by Government Programs and firmly cemented by a cadre of determined elder ladies who refuse to allow evolution or even change, of any kind…
And your account of Matt Rees is a bit silly to me, since the very first thing he ever said to me was a verifiable untruth, and since a public official in a minor government position should never hire his own children! As far as I am concerned, everything else that has happened, since Mr Rees became CEO, was pure “accident of history”, and since even CEO’s bounce around from job to job when something does not “work out”, like Rees did, eventually, since he was working as an Accountant at SHCHD, while the District hired a Headhunter, for $50,000, who failed to find interested and available talent, so, the Board hired Rees!
Rees thinks so little of Garberville, that he doesn’t even live in the District! Kinda like myself, who thought Garberville was too “skid row”, so I bought a house in Redway…
Your hospital treats its employees like garbage, and throws away the real talent in order to maintain a kind of “Ozark Staff”, but in the end, your Administrators will have created something beyond their reach, beyond their own abilities, and beyond the “scope of practice” of a tiny rural facility in a very backwards place…
Rees, he will move on, Scown, he will be there till his last detectable heartbeat, Truitt, hell, come on Barbara, step aside, and Stromstad, will draw her last breath, down in the SNF.
I say bravo, to these folks, who are masters of maintaining the hospital, exactly the way they want it, and nobody should think that any other District Hospital is any different, or any better…
For the rest of it, Hell, it’s Garberville, and, as my wife would say: “these people are all on drugs”…
The hospital is for everyone, not just Kent, Barbara, and Corrine.
Amen