Thomason Tax Rate Approved; Hospital Set For New Recruiting Campaign
EL PASO, TX – Thomason Hospital is set to begin a new multi-million dollar campaign to attract morephysicians to the borderland.
Monday, County Commissioners approved the new tax rate for the county hospital. Taxpayers will pay only 17 cents per $100 of home valuation. Last year, taxpayers had to pay 18 cents per $100 of valuation. The new tax rate will stillraise the same amount of money, if not more, than last year’s rate because the value of most El Paso properties went up this year.
Thomason CEO Jim Valenti told the court the hospital board will use the funds raised by the tax rate to focus on upgrading the facility and expand some services, specifically, the cardiology, neurology, trauma and pediatric departments.
In recent years, the hospital has become profitable and some Commissioners expressed their satisfaction with the turnaround. “Jim Valenti, his staff, the board of managers, they did a really great job of making sure they make the necessary investments in the hospital, they do enough to provide for growth, and at the same time, keep taxes down,” said Commissioner Veronica Escobar at Monday’s meeting.
The new budget will allow the hospital to begin a new multi-million dollar recruitment campaign. Hospital officials tellABC-7 they are looking to spent $10-million dollars on recruitment next year. Last year, the hospital spent only$500,000 to bring new physicians to the area.
“Our Community is way undeserved,” said Ron Action, Chairman of Thomason’s board. The hospital will look to recruit “every conceivable type of doctor,” he added.
A large portion of the funds that will be used to recruit out of town physicians will be geared towards the new children’s hospital, which still needs to be approved by voters. “We need to go ahead and make sure that we have doctors to serve the children in this community,” said Action.
Action also said theother specialists the hospital is set to recruit will either devote their practice entirely to Thomason or spend a large portion of their time doing research for the Texas Tech School of Medicine.
Escobar tells ABC-7 arrangements had already been made with former Texas Tech Dean, Dr. Robert Suskind. He was replaced last week by his predecessor, Dr. Manny de la Rosa. “I do hope Dr. de la Rosa and the other folks at Tech will communicate with us as Dr. Suskind did about their plan for physician recruitment because that’s county taxpayer money,” she said.
The fate of the Children’s hospital will be decided in a November sixth election. Early voting starts October 22nd.
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Written and reported for broadcast by Stephanie Valle
Written for the web by Joe Villasana
