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| Signing IHS Joint Venture agreement. |
Osiyo. It was a historic achievement for the Cherokee Nation
recently as the tribe negotiated, finalized and signed a Joint Venture Construction
Program agreement with Indian Health Service to provide a new world-class health
facility at our WW Hastings Hospital campus in Tahlequah.
Later this spring we will break ground on the new facility,
which is planned to be more than 450,000 square feet. Cherokee Nation will
construct the facility at a cost of between $150 and $175 million. IHS will
provide the staffing, including doctors, nurses and other professionals, a cost
estimated to be more than $80 million annually for at least 20 years and likely
longer.
This historic project will be transformative for generations
of our citizens in northeast Oklahoma. Our plan was to take a big step forward
for Cherokee health care; instead, we took a giant leap of faith and surpassed anything
we could have hoped for.
Once complete, sometime in late 2019, this will be a
state-of-the-art health care center and the absolute crown jewel in our health
care system. This is far and away the largest project IHS has ever helped a
tribal government achieve. Our hospital is twice as big as the next largest IHS
joint venture. It is something monumental, and it’s something we should all be
proud of.
IHS will work through Congress to secure the funds for
staffing and operations for the life of the building. IHS saw Cherokee Nation
as a good partner to deliver quality care, and together we are making the
health of Indian Country our top priority.
During my tenure as Principal Chief, no issue has been as
important to me as ensuring our health care services continue to grow with our
tribe. It’s been my mission to help drive down the extreme health disparities
our Indian communities face. I’ve worked with passion and purpose, and today we
are aggressively striving to improve the wellness of our tribe, both individually
and collectively.
We wisely invested $100 million of our businesses’ profits
to expand and refurbish smaller clinics, and now we have a significant public-private
partnership in place with IHS that will create construction jobs, health care
jobs and an enormous positive economic impact in our region. This is the next step
to ensuring Cherokee health care is the best in Indian Country and that our
citizens reap the benefit.
Cherokee Nation operates the largest tribal health system in
America, and we desperately needed a new hospital, as the current 190,000-square-foot
facility is more than 30 years old. It serves nearly 400,000 patient visits per
year when it was built to handle only about 60,000 per year. This agreement
will allow our health department to better meet the demand and needs of our
Cherokee Nation citizens and other Native Americans who access our health
system.
A special thanks goes to the leadership in Congress who
championed our cause. U.S. Representatives Tom Cole (R-OK) and Betty McCollum (D-MN)
led a bipartisan effort to reopen this IHS construction program, as well as
Cherokee Nation citizen and Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) for representing our
needs with the federal agencies.
It’s a golden moment in our Cherokee history. In three short
years when we dedicate this new massive health complex, we will know in our
hearts that the next several generations of Cherokees – our children and
grandchildren – will have a better future. They will have more opportunities to
live healthier lives. They will have access to cutting-edge, modern medicine.
For me, there is no better feeling in the world than knowing this is on the horizon
for you and the ones we all love so deeply.
Wado.
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