About 15 years ago, every front page of the Gazette was headlined by news about the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital — and the news wasn’t good.

Both residents and visitors learned that hospital trustees and management had been using its endowment to subsidize daily operating expenses. In other words, the hospital’s income was less than its expenses and the Vineyard hospital was going broke. In addition, the aging hospital facility looked like a group of decrepit, interconnected shacks with outdated services and technology to match.

The board hired a number of off-Island consultants and more money was spent to find solutions for the hospital’s multiple problems. Perhaps out of desperation, someone came up with the idea to look around our Island community to find a solution more suitable for the unique needs of Martha’s Vineyard.

John Ferguson, a longtime seasonal Vineyard resident and, at the time, the CEO of a major medical center in New Jersey, was asked to join the hospital’s board of trustees. Shortly afterward he was elected chairman.

The rest is history and obvious to anyone driving down Beach Road, walking through the doors of the hospital’s emergency department, or into many of the on-site doctors’ offices, laboratory and radiology facilities.

John Ferguson led a fundraising drive which tapped into the entire Vineyard community of both year-round and seasonal residents. As a result, a state-of-the-art hospital, free of debt, was constructed. Boston’s world-class medical care system joined into a partnership with the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital and our small rural hospital now offers top-quality care to patients year round. (Did you know, for example, that your X-rays at the hospital are read and interpreted by Mass General Hospital radiologists?)

The point of this letter is to suggest that rather than repeat the mistakes of the past (such as hiring multiple costly off-Island consultants who don’t understand the Vineyard’s unique culture and needs), that we look to our own resources.

John Ferguson is semi-retired and still living in West Tisbury. Why doesn’t the board contact him to see if he will help again?

Belinda S. Eichler
Edgartown