Forde Shorts

Watch it! Hospital video tour – Click on "take a tour" on the web site TVHD.org for a four-and-a-half minute video tour of the new Tehachapi Replacement Critical Access Hospital. Senior Project Engineer Ana Vlad is the tour guide. Residents of the Tehachapi Valley Healthcare District who have supported this project and have twice voted bond measures to build it will be happy to see the construction progress on this outstanding facility.

KMC on its own – Kern Medical Center CEO Russell Judd told the Greater Tehachapi Economic Development Council (GTEDC) on Nov. 4 that on July 1, 2015, the medical center will become an independent entity with its own board of directors as the hospital and its assets are transferred from the County of Kern to the new Kern County Hospital Authority. Supervisors approved the ordinance creating the Authority on Oct. 6. Judd reported a remarkable turnaround in the Center finances in the past 18 months as a result of better collection of money owed to the hospital by insurance companies, California's Medical program and the federal Medicare program. "We're not out taking homes," he assured the GTEDC.

Business savvy --Houchin Blood Bank CEO Greg Gallion said there were 40 blood drives in Tehachapi in 2015, with 1,300 units collected – "Three times more than in 2010." While many community blood banks around the nation are being acquired by larger entities or failing as businesses, the non-profit Houchin adapts to a changing industry, he said. Thanks in large part to the generosity of owner Bill Bolthouse of Bolthouse Farms, which he sold to Campbell Soup, Houchin is 100 percent debt-free and housed in a new facility on a five-acre campus. Gallion encouraged visitors to tour the Bolthouse Drive facility and – oh yes – give blood or precious cancer-fighter platelets, which have a short five-day shelf life.

Yay for Tehachapi – CHP Sgt. John Williams said he had never seen a community respond so wholeheartedly as Tehachapi did during the mudslides. "You brought food, coffee... you kept us hydrated and kept us going for five days."