Centra Southside Community Hospital's new President and CEO, E. W. Tibbs, has made a good first impression in the community but strengthening the connection with the community is the goal at which he is aiming himself, Centra, and Farmville's hospital.

Attaining the goal, and everything associated with it, is in everyone's best interest.

The hospital has a huge impact on the local economy, with over 520 employees and a payroll over $20 million, but the greatest reverberations, obviously, are felt through the provision of health care for the region.

The success of Centra Southside Community Hospital is important on virtually every level that matters.

As Mr. Tibbs introduced himself this spring he keyed the community into his three primary goals:

Effectively bringing the hospital into the Centra system.

Increasing the connection with the community.

Delivering value to the community.

The hospital, he tells anyone who will listen, belongs to the community. The presence of a hospital in Farmville, along with Longwood University, has been, is now, and ever shall be critical to what sets this community apart from other towns of similar, or even larger, size.

Economically.

Quality of life.

You name it.

Increasing the community connection is vital because the trust of a community in its hospital is the essential ingredient in the relationship;.

“If you trust your community hospital, when you have a need you'll come there. And so we've got to make sure we get that level of connection that we need throughout our community, geographically, across all groups of people, and that we maintain it,” Mr. Tibbs told the Farmville Area Chamber of Commerce this spring.

At the center of trust between a community and a hospital is, of course, the ability to receive a consistent high level of medical care-delivering value to the community.

Mr. Tibbs has a very practical definition of value, and quite accurate. “Value, for me, is a combination of quality and cost. If our organization produces a product that's high quality, and we can measure that and show it to you but you can't afford it, it's just going to sit on the shelf. We've got to make sure that we've got measurable quality and that we're affordable.”

Absolute common sense.

The best product in the world does nothing for those who cannot afford it, nor will the producer of an unaffordable product stay in business very long.

Conversely, the affordability of a second-class product is equally without value, for both the consumer and the provider.

Expense and mediocrity will make all shoppers for any product seek out the alternative-affordable quality.

Mr. Tibbs knows that everyone has a list in their head and in their heart of the people who are most important to them, those whose lives make their own lives particularly meaningful. Centra Southside's president and CEO has his own list and it is no different than any of our own. His wife is on that list. So are the couple's two daughters.

“My expectation,” Mr. Tibbs told chamber members, “and what I've shared with folks at the hospital and throughout our offices, is simply put-that everybody we interact with, whether they're a patient or a family member-they get the same level of care and service every time that any one of us would want for anybody that's on our special list. It has to be individualized. It has to be focused to meet their needs. And it has to be every time.”

That is absolutely what each of us want for our own families and loved ones in the greatest, or any, time of need.

Keeping the eye on that ball will result in the home runs that matter most-the happy return home through the front door into the arms of those who love them by another person healed at Centra Southside Community Hospital.

Welcome, Mr. Tibbs, to the community.

Keep us and our hospital on your list of special people who deserve the highest level of care.

We offer the same welcome and make the identical request of W. Michael Bryant, who was unveiled last week as the next President and CEO of Centra.

This community deserves it.

-JKW-