x
Breaking News
More () »

Two candidates looking to bring new faces to Medical Center Hospital Board

Early voting in Ector County elections beings Monday, April 24 and Don Hallmark and Bryn Dodd are looking to bring new faces to the Medical Center Hospital Board.

ODESSA, TX (KWES) - Early voting in Ector County elections beings Monday, April 24 and Don Hallmark and Bryn Dodd are looking to bring new faces to the Medical Center Hospital Board.

"I think most of us have all been knocking on doors, just trying to get our names out there, meet people and educate them on this election and make sure they understand how important it is and how it affects our community," said District 1 candidate, Bryn Dodd.

The changes made to MCH retirees insurance is one of the hot topics happening at the hospital right now, and it is one of the utmost importance to these candidates.

"We've got to go back in there and restore the integrity of the board. This has totally destroyed the integrity of the board," said District 5 candidate, Don Hallmark.

Dodd's father was one of the many MCH retirees that went through these insurance changes and his situation fueled Dodd into to running for this board.

"He said this would be a great board to join if you could ya know, it's an important board and you could make a difference," said Dodd.

Both candidates believe that what happened to these retirees also has had an affect on current staff at the hospital.

"If you look at a morale that's not positive, and you look at high stress levels in a work place, then they're not going to be productive. They're not going to want to come to work and then our patients aren't going to get the quality of care that they need. So we need to take care of the staff that run that hospital," said Dodd.

The retirees sued the hospital over the insurance and recently lost that case. Both candidates believe they could give the retirees their original insurance back to them.

"We'll go back in and we'll have to present it, have it go through the discussion phases and go through all the different things its gone through before. But in this case, it'll be the board running the administration instead of the administration running the board," said Hallmark.

We reached out to both members currently serving on the board for these districts, but they were unable to comment on Friday. .

Medical Center Hospital wants to reiterate that the retiree health coverage was not eliminated. They transitioned to a different method to provide coverage for these retirees by a pre-funded account.

This pre-funded account became available to them on January 1, 2017.

Before You Leave, Check This Out