Living Our Purpose | A Message from CEO Dave Ressler

Accountability. It is one of our five core values that guides us and our organization. It means we are accountable to one another, to our patients and to our community. It is in our DNA. Since we started as the Citizens’ Hospital in 1891—serving our mining town with the support of the miners and their donations of a day’s wages (about $3.50)—we have had a clear understanding of our purpose, which we define as providing extraordinary healthcare in an environment of excellence, compassion and trust.  

Over the past 133 years, the essence of what we do, and why we do it, remains as clear today as it was back then. However, the manner in which we achieve our purpose has changed, as medicine has advanced, and technology has evolved. In this month’s issue, we introduce the summer edition of our Healthy Journey magazine, which is full of information about how we are providing 21^st century healthcare to not just be there for you when you are sick and injured, but to help you maintain your good health and an active lifestyle.

I am often asked by new members of our community about the capabilities of our Hospital, which is a good and important question. The simple answer is we provide those services that we assuredly can perform safely and with the best possible outcomes. Our physicians and healthcare professionals are highly trained and aided by the most sophisticated technologies including imaging, diagnostics, robotics, monitoring equipment and procedural implants. We are very good at what we do, and we “stick to our knitting.” This also means we don’t try to perform services that can wait and would be better provided by one of our partners at a higher level of care. I hope you will find our Healthy Journey magazine helpful in explaining our services, and why our investments in the professionals and technologies to support them are essential to fulfilling our purpose.

Accountability to our community also means being transparent about how we utilize our community’s financial support. This support comes in the form of property taxes, philanthropy and payments for our services. In this edition of Healthy Journey, we include a discussion which highlights where our funding comes from and the resources it supports. Our Aspen Valley Hospital Board of Directors assures we are being good stewards of our healthcare resources, as you will hear from Dr. Mindy Nagle, our Board Chair.

If you find the monthly enewsletters and our Healthy Journey magazine helpful, please let us know. If not, let us know how we can better inform and assist your own healthy journey.

Dave