BURROWS RUNNING FOR SMHD BOARD
There are four candidates vying for three seats on the Southern Mono Healthcare District Board this November
The incumbents are: Ryan Wood, a well-known local attorney and son of Rick Wood, a former Town Mayor.
Alec Clowes is a software engineer and businessman/entrepreneur who moved to Mammoth Lakes in 2019 and serves as the treasurer for the board.
Laurey Carlson works as a General Manager at Mammoth Mountain Ski Area. She’s served on Ski Patrol for over two decades and has her Emergency Medical Technician certification.
Which brings us to the challenger, Jennifer Burrows, who is well known in the community, having served as a Mammoth Lakes Planning and Economic Development Commissioner (PEDC) for the past eight years.
“There’s not a lot of people who have all the knowledge and education that I do who will or want to run for the board,” she said.
People also know Jennifer through her husband, Craig Burrows. He was the former Mammoth Hospital Chief Medical Officer and her candidacy comes a year after his departure from the role.
“I started talking about the decision to run before he left,” she said. “It didn’t play into it, it just happened to be around the same time.”
While she thinks her husband did a great job in his role as CMO, she wants people to see her as an individual candidate, she said.
Burrows ran for Mammoth Lakes Town Council twice. After being unsuccessful in those races, she joined the PEDC as a way to build up her political resume, she said. But healthcare is her true passion.
“This is something I consider myself an expert in – healthcare,” she said. “I feel like I need to use that expertise and give back. That’s what drives me.”
Burrows has been a nurse for 25 years, or in her words, “too long.” She holds a doctorate in education with an emphasis on healthcare administration and leadership and currently teaches nursing students at Cerro Coso Community College.
She also served as the Deputy Director of Mono County Public Health for two years, from 2021 to 2023.
“Three out of the five board members have no medical background,” she said. “And I think it’s very important to have someone who’s had that experience.”
Burrows is specifically excited about the opportunity to work on the North Wing project, a major remodel for the hospital in which the inpatient and ancillary services will be moved to a new building.
Construction for the project is slated to commence in May 2025 and is expected to be completed by 2028. The term for Southern Mono Healthcare District Board begins December 6, 2024 and lasts four years.
“I think it’s really hard to plan a new wing, a new hospital, without really knowing anything about patient care,” she said. “You have people who have no idea about healthcare making decisions that are going to impact our community, not just my generation, but the next generation as well.”
Burrows said she worked in a hospital in San Diego during a full reconstruction and she was part of the planning for that hospital, specifically the ER.
She has disagreed with a few choices by the board on their plans for the project thus far, namely she wants to build out the number of beds and to add another endoscopy room.
She also wants to make sure the Board is prepared to train staff on the new building’s layout, which took six months to accomplish in the San Diego rebuild.
As a broader mission, she hopes to improve communication between administration and staff and forge a better work culture.
Currently, the staff doesn’t trust the system that allows them to anonymously report issues to administration, she said. This means if there’s mistakes or bad performances, they aren’t reported.
“There needs to be an opportunity for staff to voice their concerns,” she said.
She also hopes to improve outreach to more rural parts of the county and to better communicate with the spanish-speaking population.
“The hospital has a great education program and they do a lot of outreach,” she said. “But I think the North County is just kind of cut off from all that, especially when roads close.”
To solve this issue, she wants to appoint a point-person to improve communication between public health and the hospital to determine what resources are needed, she said.
Elder care also needs to be a priority. There are more elderly people here than people think – just go to the Snowcreek pickleball courts for proof, she told me.
“There’s studies out there that say there’s going to be a nursing shortage,” she said. “And there’s going to be a shortage of hospital beds and nursing home beds as the baby boomers start aging up and are getting sicker.”
Her experience in patient care leads her to believe she will be able to predict and prepare for trends like this.
Burrows will stay active in the community no matter the outcome, she says.
The Sheet will profile the incumbent candidates in future issues.
