In a crisp event that ran barely an hour, the three candidates for two open seats on the Board of Directors of the Hi-Desert Memorial Healthcare District showed little substantive difference in their responses during a forum on Wednesday night. Reporter Dan Stork gives a snapshot of what was said…
Hi-Desert Medical Center candidates Dan McClure, Marge Doyle, and Paul Hoffman all view affiliation as inevitable, expect that a new partner will want to “consolidate” staffing, and will do their best to soften the blow. All said they were good at building teams, achieving consensus, and collaborating with other organizations, and each said that he or she was so well known in the District that there would be no surprises with the leadership styles. All said they’d rather increase revenues—through expanded services—than cut costs, with Hoffman lamenting that the 2015 budget projects a large deficit without revenue increases. Hoffman labeled his “retirement” from the board this past January a mistake. Each cited familiarity with the district’s workings as a qualification—McClure with 16 years as chief information officers, Doyle with seven years as director of nursing, and Hoffman as a 14-year board member.
