Northern Arizona Healthcare met with about 32 stakeholders from municipalities and government agencies at the Verde Valley Medical Center on the morning of Wednesday, August 6, to discuss the nonprofit health care provider’s 2030 Strategic Plan that it has been developing for nearly the last two years.
NAH provided a similar presentation the following day, on Thursday, Aug. 7, in Flagstaff with Coconino County leaders and unveiled the plan to the public on Friday, August 8.
There are no plans to shutter Northern Arizona Healthcare’s Sedona medical facility, CEO Dave Cheney stressed at several points during the presentation.
“I don’t see that happening under my leadership,” Cheney said. “I think that’s a valuable community asset that we have there and I have zero plans to do that.”
The strategic plan lays out NAH’s goals for the next five years and focuses on four “strategic imperatives.”
“From 2025 to 2030, NAH will: 1) put our people and community first, 2) advance our path to clinical excellence, 3) grow our reach — including the construction of a modern regional referral hospital facility — and 4) achieve financial and organizational stability,” an NAH press release reads. “Each of those imperatives is supported by a strategic objective and six strategic initiatives. … These elements all emerged from the listening sessions we conducted via dedicated conversations … and broad community surveys.”
Flagstaff voters in 2023 overwhelmingly rejected Proposition 480 by 72% that would have re-zoned about 100 acres near Fort Tuthill County Park that NAH owns to allow it to build a new hospital on the site.
A new location for Flagstaff Medical Center’s successor is still being discussed, NAH COO Robert “Bo” Cofield said during the meeting.
“We will make a recommendation to the [NAH] board for site selection by the end of this calendar year,” Cofield said. “We have four or five [sites] that are under consideration. Some of them can’t talk about because of [non-disclosure agreements] … but we want to move this [process] along.”
A commonality of all municipal leadership was praise for Cheney’s leadership since starting his position.
“[NAH] has come a long way in communicating with the cities and towns in the Verde Valley,” Sedona Mayor Scott Jablow said. “They’ve really shown a commitment that they want to improve … the communication has increased exponentially.”
“The Town of Camp Verde is encouraged by NAH’s 2030 strategic plan,” Camp Verde Town Manager Miranda Fisher said. “If all the strategies can be executed, it’ll help with community engagement and transform people’s lived experiences, which is most important. For some Camp Verde community members, their experience with NAH has been less than desirable and we are eager to help NAH change that narrative.”
”My big takeaway [from the meeting] is that it’s a very positive, forward looking strategic plan,” Clarkdale Mayor Robyn Prud’homme-Bauer said. “They are working on investing in … the Verde Valley [and] they were honest about some of the obstacles, as best as I could be.”
A common concern among the meeting attendees was how the passage of the Big Beautiful Bill Act will affect NAH’s operations in the Verde Valley, which includes a $50 billion appropriation for the Rural Health Transformation Program.
“We don’t know how that [$50 billion] is going to be distributed,” Cheney later said. “We don’t know if we’re going to have access to it. … We don’t know how the midterms are going to go that can change things. Everybody wants to know the answer to [that] question. … We have to just kind of wait and see how that is going to impact [NAH].”
Cofield said NAH’s outgrowing its available space at Flagstaff Medical Center, and that is affecting patients and NAH’s ability to effectively operate.
“We have an MRI machine in a semi-trailer outside of radiology at Flagstaff Medical Center,” Cofield said and elaborated that capital constraints also affect NAH’s ability to recruit doctors.
The effect of cuts to Medicaid in the BBA to NAH’s bottom line are also unknown.
“When we got into our budgeting process for this current fiscal year… [Cheney said] ‘we need to anticipate something related to reductions in Medicaid,’ because we knew that was coming, and we put something into our budget,” to that effect,” Cofield said.
“But guess what? The One Big Beautiful Bill delayed all of those Medicaid implications, the ones that we were anticipating for another two years.”
The NAH 2030 plan is available online at nahealth.com/about-us/2030-strategic-plan. NAH will also post periodic updates to the website.
