BGMH

Dear Friends of Biggs-Gridley Memorial Hospital:

A year ago, Biggs-Gridley Memorial Hospital Foundation members and concerned community members engaged in what many thought was an impossible mission: "Save  Our Hospital." BGMH was facing closure by January 1, 2009, which would have meant the end of a local emergency room on the Highway 99 corridor, the end of local hospital inpatient care, as well as the potential loss of several hundred jobs in a trickle down effect in this community.

Amazingly, in a 50 day period, over $500,000 was raised to counteract this closure and return the hospital to local control.  And this occurred when the national economy was nose diving in one of its most ominous downward spirals since the Great Depression!  This support was no isolated event. Two years prior, in 2006, local residents showed their voted approval of Measure "C" in Biggs, Gridley, and Richvale to help fund the Hospital Emergency Room.

When I have discussed these successes with friends from other communities, they have been more than merely impressed. They have been amazed! Biggs-Gridley Memorial Hospital's story is the "best" of "small town America." In a grassroots fashion, past and present community members, staff, and business friends have offered their time, talent, and treasure to keep the Hospital a valuable resource in the community, against all the odds of it surviving.

On behalf of the Foundation Board, I wish to sincerely thank all of you who assisted in keeping intact this valued resource in our local health care delivery services.

We obviously have many challenging goals in the future: Build a new Emergency Room; purchase updated and new hospital equipment; hire new doctors; install a new communications system; and, ultimately build a new hospital.  Rather than be overwhelmed by these challenges, we are "taking them on" in a strategic and comprehensive fashion.

BGMH is changing and getting better at what it does thanks to local control with a new Administration, a new Board of Directors, a new Foundation, new Emergency Room staff, the systematic addition of new equipment, but most of all, the new optimistic attitude of "YES, WE CAN!"

The BGMH Foundation has adopted a new Mission Statement: 'The mission of the Foundation is to provide financial support and promote Biggs-Gridley Memorial Hospital as an integral component of our rural community's health care system." The Foundation's new Vision Statement reads: "Our vision is to inspire the community to give time, treasure and talent for the benefit of health and wellness and to foster relationships with community members by providing meaningful giving and volunteer opportunities."

Watch for and take opportunities to assist your Hospital Foundation in helping make progress and growth occur at BGMH. Your attendance at special events, donations to the Hospital's Annual Appeal, and sharing of your talents and time are all needed to ensure BGMH's success in reaching new goals.

We are a small, but determined community that will not back down from having a viable hospital to provide care for our community health needs.

Thank you for your continued support.

Margaret Desmond Hughes
BGMH Foundation Board, President