Ch-ch-ch-changes | A Message from CEO Dave Ressler

My time for change has arrived. With a new Aspen Valley Health CEO in place sometime around the new year, and after a transition period, I will be starting a new chapter in my life—retirement.

My hospital administration career began in 1993 as the Chief Operating Officer of a regional hospital 20 miles north of the Mexican border in southern Arizona. I was 28 years old, and I was provided with a rare opportunity for somebody my age to pursue a goal of becoming involved in rural healthcare and to be a part of a small community (60,000 population in the county). With a couple brief detours along the way, I have spent the past 32 years on that amazing journey, without a single regret. My wife, Julie, has been on this journey with me, which became our journey, during which we raised two children along the way. For 18 of the last 21 years, we have called Aspen home, all the while knowing that it was my job as the AVH CEO that provided the housing, and someday we would move again.

Three years ago, with long-term retirement plans in mind, Julie and I bought a parcel of land near Ridgway, Colorado, and one thing led to another. We are now putting the final touches on our “forever” home with a mixture of emotions. We both have jobs we love and work with people we will dearly miss seeing daily. We have both worked hard all our lives, since we were teenagers, and the prospect of a Monday morning without a job to attend is daunting and exhilarating at the same time.

But life is all about perspective, and we will have plenty of time to look anew at our lives, our purpose and our relationships with our grown children, nieces, nephews and other family members. Similarly, I have an opportunity to consider Aspen Valley Health with a different lens; that would be a wide-angle lens that considers a 134-year history and a multi-generational future.

Through this lens, I see an organization that has continued to grow and be reshaped as the community and its needs have changed. From its origins in 1891 as the Citizens’ Hospital—located in a Victorian-era residential-style building, for many years with one physician and a couple staff members—to a multi-campus, modern and technologically advanced system of services and over 500 dedicated staff and physicians working in harmony, AVH has answered destiny’s call.

Arguably, the last two decades have seen a lot of growth and change, but I am sure the same was said in the late 1970’s and into the 1990’s when the new Castle Creek campus was developed and the Health and Human Services building and assisted living (Whitcomb Terrace) were added (along with a new CEO house on the far north end of the property). Time and perspective are relative.

And yet, on the space-time continuum (a Back to the Future reference), AVH will continue its course as an important community resource governed by an elected board of directors with a laser focus on its mission of providing extraordinary healthcare serving current and future generations. Of that we can be sure. And AVH will continue to attract top talent in all capacities, win awards for our patient experience and quality of care, and be a central part of the health and wellbeing of our community.

That is who we are, and what we do.