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Our situation in healthcare is not driven so much by how other businesses are driven. Healthcare probably as much as any business is somewhat immune to the economic conditions that affect other employers. People are still going to have accidents, and people are still going to have babies, and they are still going to have heart attacks, and people are still going to get hurt, they’re going to get sick, all those things that happen in life, and so they’ll come in and they’ll need medical care, they’ll need rehab services, or they may need home-care services or they may need assisted-living arrangements. Maybe they need the outpatient services that we provide through our women’s center, through dietary training, and other services. We have a durable medical-equipment company and a number of other related activities that go somewhat outside the realm of traditional acute-care hospital situations. We have public-relations people, we have bio-engineering, as most organizations do, we have HR functions, we have a psychiatric hospital – separate, but a part of our organization – that needs all kinds of psychiatric nurses, psychiatric counselors, mental-health consultants – you name it. So when you add up the totality of all these different activities, there’s a good number of the graduates out of Columbus Technical College that would be candidates for employment with this organization. I am hopeful – and confident, at the same time – that Columbus Technical College can continue to assimilate and provide the resources to continue the various programs that we’re talking about here into the future and that we can continue to help each other. I am confident, also, that the number of people interested in health-related areas is going to continue to grow – and so will the number of applicants the school will experience. We look forward to our future together. Read Complete Interview with Michael Garrigan
LARRY
SANDERS, CEO Several years ago we learned that Columbus State University was choosing to no longer train associate-degree nurses – that they just didn’t see that as a part of their mission.
I’m proud to say that the image of Columbus Technical College has changed dramatically over the last three or four years, due to the leadership of Dr. Breeden and Bob Jones and lots of other people affiliated with Columbus Tech. They’ve been out in the community; they’ve been totally connected to the community. The physical facilities that they have developed and proposed for the future have captured the interest of students. We made a conscious, major decision to align ourselves with them in a long-term partnership. By working hand-in-hand with Columbus Tech all the way through the process, what we are able to do is convey to them and to their faculty members and, ultimately, to their students, who we are as an organization and what our needs really are. We have involvement, really, all the way down to the classroom. Because of this relationship, we have the opportunity to have some of our key professionals meeting with students, helping to educate them. What it establishes clearly, from the beginning, is what our expectation of quality really is and what a dedicated employee needs to be in order to be successful in our organization. I think it’s given us the chance to be as close to training our own workforce as you can get without actually being the educator in your own right. It’s a unique opportunity to convey our expectations right in the middle of the classroom, and then Columbus Tech helps us turn out a product that meets that expectation. Read Complete Interview with Larry Sanders
I’d say over the last year we’ve dealt with many different personnel needs. One comes to the forefront for a period of time, and we solve it temporarily and then another one presents itself. We go from lacking med techs to lacking pharmacists; lack of radiology technicians becomes a problem from time to time as well. Certainly, nurses – we have about a dozen nursing positions that we could fill right now, and, of course, that’s another time where Columbus Technical College comes into play. I see Bob Jones [president of Columbus Tech] at Rotary – I’ll stop and we’ll chat a bit, and he comes by my office generally several times a year. We talk about the needs of the hospital and the needs of Columbus Tech, and, obviously, they help us and we help them. We’re pleased to employ their graduates. We talk about what we can do to assist them in gearing up to train additional workers. I don’t know what we’d do without Columbus Tech at this point in time. And it’s going to get worse before it gets better . . . . It’s very well publicized in our industry that as you cross that 55 barrier and move on up, the number of hospital days grows exponentially. We’ve got a great big bubble coming along and hospital utilization is about to go through the roof, and as it does, there’s going to be a severe crunch put on the healthcare industry . . . . Bob Jones has told me they’ve got some interesting plans for expansion [at Columbus Tech] which we really need. We’ve got a good thing going here. Read
Complete Interview with Hugh Wilson
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MICHAEL
GARRIGAN, CEO 
[Associate-degree
nurses are] critical – they’re absolutely essential –
to the success of the healthcare organizations here in Columbus, and
Columbus Tech stepped in to fill the void. 
