Over the years, Jenny Birnie had heard that a new station was needed for ambulance and rescue crews at Gunnison Valley Health. In her role as the executive director of the GVH Foundation, she was in a unique role to get the problem fixed.
Just three years ago, Birnie took a visit to the emergency medical services station used by GVH EMS crews. Her visit led to the foundation’s biggest capital campaign yet.
“At the time, when we had the old station, there were no living quarters,” she said. “It was tiny. It only had a few garage bays. We would have vehicles outside in the freezing cold and you had EMS crews who were in an apartment across the street from the hospital. Their response times were compromised.”
Birnie and the GVH Foundation team got busy developing a plan to get a new EMS station built for the health system. It wasn’t going to be a small task, as $12 million needed to be raised.
The foundation and the community, though, got the job done and in September the ribbon was cut on the new Mary and Jack Blake Family EMS Station. By the end of the campaign, 637 donors pitched in. Donations ranged from $10 to $2 million and everything in between, Birnie said.
“It was really incredible,” she said.
It is estimated that the new station will cut response times by four minutes. That could be the difference between life and death in some cases, she said.
The EMS station was a very big project that shined a very public light on the work being done by the GVH Foundation. While the station was the foundation’s biggest project to date, they’ve been hard at work behind the scenes since 2009 to improve rural health care here in Gunnison.
A total of 17 board members help direct the foundation and the results of everyone’s work is impressive, including (but not limited to) the following list of accomplishments:
There are many smaller projects that the foundation has funded, too, including one that provides stuffed animals to pediatric patients and another that provides gift baskets to new mothers.
Birnie pointed out that GVH offers services for the youngest patients at its new birthing center, it offers exceptional services for senior citizens at its new Senior Care Center and everyone in between.
“We have incredible providers,” she said. “We have board certified surgeons and physicians. We have incredible nurses. We’re highly rated through our surveys we do with our patients. We have some of the best scores in the nation, honestly.”
Fundraising is obviously a key component of Birnie’s work at the foundation, but a close second is education. If a donor doesn’t know what GVH is and does, even the best fundraising message won’t work.
“I’ve lived in the valley for 20 years,” she said. “I still have people ask me what I do at the hospital. I always say, ‘It’s a health system. It’s not just a hospital.’
“We ask people to give money to support the great work that Gunnison Valley Health is doing. We also do a lot of educating of potential donors and the general public about what we do and the importance of having rural health care and having this hospital here.”
Recent donors have inquired about how changes in Medicaid reimbursement are going to affect GVH, and they’ve been worried about the impact those changes could have. In response to those inquiries, the foundation started an annual giving program so donors can help be a part of keeping a health care system in Gunnison for the next five, 10 and 20 years.
“It is the foundation’s responsibility to ensure GVH has the funds they need,” Birnie said.
Gunnison Valley Health is part of the Gunnison Country Times sponsored content program called Spotlight.
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