We are at the beginning of a new year, reflecting on the past, embracing the present, and looking ahead to the future.

This is the time of year when municipalities in the Sauk Valley start planning for the upcoming year and the steps they’ll take to improve residents’ quality of life.

In Sterling, the city council recently approved issuing $41.9 million in General Obligation Bonds to enhance hospital services and facilities within the Community General Hospital (CGH) Medical Center network.

The CGHMC Board of Directors, CGHMC leadership, administration, and the organization itself planned these improvements and will carry them out in several phases over the coming years with the funds provided by these bonds.

Understanding CGHMC’s past achievements, current needs, and future goals motivated this action, all aimed at improving the Sterling/Rock Falls facilities. The goal is to keep the money and jobs these improvements generate local.

According to the 2025 CGHMC Report to Our Community, Community General Hospital Medical Center serves a five-county area in northwestern Illinois, with clinics in 10 communities, providing care to thousands of patients and experiencing year-over-year growth in patient services (2024-25).

CGHMC will continue to serve this area for many years to come, so long as we reflect on its past, embrace the present, and continue our work to secure its future. Which brings us to today.

CGHMC is one of the largest employers in the Sauk Valley, with more than 1,500 employees, according to the Greater Sterling Development Corporation website. Each of these 1,500 employees dedicates their lives to caring for their patients and customers.

Whether they greet you at the door, draw blood for lab tests, take X-rays of your worn-out hip, are part of the surgical team that gives you a new hip, or are the nurses who help you regain your strength and send you home, each of these workers is a blessing to our community. In fact, all healthcare providers in the Sauk Valley are blessings to us all.

Looking ahead to future needs, aside from the bond issuance for improvements, CGHMC recently received a significant boost in service delivery, administration, and scheduling with the launch of a new electronic health record system, Epic, which includes a user-friendly patient portal, MyChart.

MyChart keeps you updated on your upcoming appointments with regular text messages and reminders about your medical care schedule.

Once you’re set up in the MyChart program, the webpage created for personal use is a useful resource for finding answers to your questions or reviewing your surgeon’s postoperative notes.

My recent experience with a major medical event demonstrated that the MyChart system effectively helps manage and communicate appointments with multiple healthcare providers within the CGHMC network, including lab work, physical therapy, consultations, and more.

Thanks to MyChart and my surgeon’s postoperative notes. I now understand what the word ‘subcutaneous’ means. Thanks, Doc!

CGHMC consistently plans for future needs to provide the best healthcare services to its patients. To secure its future and continue meeting the needs of its five-county area and the Sauk Valley, it could use a little extra support.

The Community General Hospital Health Foundation, founded in 1987, is a dedicated organization that funds various initiatives.

This foundation provides wellness education and health services to underserved communities, along with funding for capital projects. Its primary focus is on life-changing programs that extend wellness services beyond the CGHMC facilities, and its impact continues to grow.

Contributions to this foundation support wellness programs in the Sauk Valley. To learn more about this foundation, visit www.cghmc.com/foundation.

Another way to help secure CGHMC’s future is to reach out to your state and federal representatives. Rural hospitals continue to face challenges in remaining financially stable and delivering care to their communities.

Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements for services make up most of the revenue for rural hospitals because most of their patients are covered by these programs.

The current Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement formulas need adjustments to account for inflation and increasing fixed costs related to essential services, utilities, and facility operations.

Encouraging your state and federal officials to allocate adequate funding for healthcare in their annual budgets is always an effective way to support your community hospital.

Rural hospitals are vital to our Sauk Valley communities. We depend on CGHMC in Sterling and Saint Katharine Medical Center in Dixon for healthcare, and they serve as major employers, greatly influencing the local areas in many ways.

More importantly, without them, we would be living in a healthcare desert, having to drive an hour or more to access healthcare services.

It is crucial for everyone in the Sauk Valley to keep working to defend their community hospitals and the healthcare services they offer for future generations.

Sixty-five years ago, I was the first in my family to be born in a hospital. I would hate to see our local healthcare system decline by shifting back to in-home deliveries for the next generation.

If we don’t work to keep our community hospitals in our communities, we won’t have them, and it may come to that if we don’t ante up and speak up when we can.

Jim Wise is a Sterling city councilman.