Lance Labine, Dan C. Trigg Memorial Hospital administrator, settled into his new position during his first day of work Monday.  Labine said he fulfills diverse roles as hospital administrator.
 “A lot of what I do is a lot of everything, physician recruitment, policies and procedures, human resources management, community involvement, marketing, public relations, it's a lot of different things. You wear a lot of different hats in a small community hospital.”
Labine, who comes to Tucumcari from North Carolina, said he has extensive experience at critical access hospitals. He said recruitment is at the top of his list of objectives for the hospital.
“The challenges we face here are not unlike challenges in rural hospitals all across the country. It's a shortage of physicians, shortage of health professionals, so we're trying to recruit physicians and practitioners here. The only way that you're going to provide the services you want to provide is if you have the practioners available or ready to work.”
Another recent Dan C. Trigg employee, physical therapist Russell Lees, said he was glad to be practicing in his home town after receiving a job offer in June. Lees said he graduated from Tucumcari High School in 1988, receiving a full scholarship to McMurry University in Abilene, Texas where he completed his undergraduate degree.
“My favorite thing about New Mexico is green chili and red chili, and the people of New Mexico are friendly and down to earth,” Lees said.
Lees said he helped bolster physical therapy programs in Dalhart, Texas and in Clayton after receiving his Master’s degree in physical therapy from Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene in 1999. He said he wants to foster growth at Dan C. Trigg by expanding the physical therapy program to meet the diverse needs of local patients.
“We want to be a strong enough department where you can come home and get your therapy. If someone is injured and they need to come home for rehab, we want to be the provider for that. We want to help people in this community out and make it easier for them. In the last two towns I was at, it didn't always start out that way, but it ended up that way. I built departments where people wanted to come get their therapy,” Lees said.