County appoints two new UMC board members

County commissioners voted in two new University Medical Center board members Monday. And in the process, ABC-7 is learning a lot of work is needed to make the agreement between the county, UMC and El Paso Children’s Hospital work.

Commissioners voted unanimously to approve Joy Martinez and Miguel Fernandez to the UMC board, setting the tone of future relations between the two bodies.

County Judge Veroncia Escobar laid out the serious tasks ahead of the new members, including getting the technical parts of the deal with El Paso Children’s done and continuing the work on UMC’s clinics. Most importantly of all, Escobar said they needed to work on keeping communication flowing and the relationship with commissioners working.

Escobar said that the county is making progress on its side of the deal for oversight in light of the children’s hospital deal.

“We’re making progress,” Escobar said. “So we have come up with kind of our list. And UMC will review it tomorrow formally in their meeting in executive session. And we’re hoping there’s resolution on that pretty quickly.”

Martinez said she’ll be working to get up to speed and get working as quickly as possible.

“I realize this is going to be a challenging journey as Judge Escobar described,” Martinez said. “There’s been some tough times.”

The negotiations continue with a hard deadline of the end of April fast approaching to get critical funding for El Paso Children’s.