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Little did we know when we left our Hawaii home and arrived in Alaska on Nov. 3, 2002 to begin our new journey as official residents of Soldotna that we would utilize the facilities of Central Peninsula Hospital and become continuous recipients of the services offered by Central Peninsula Hospital.

Our seven-year experience included: nine separate surgical procedures (some day surgeries and some included hospital stays), being admitted to the ER on many occasions, submitting to many blood draws from the CPH lab, scheduled X-rays, mammograms, UltraSound tests, and MRIs at the Imaging Department, plus participation in respiratory testing, EKG, treadmill tests, and heart stress tests. All of which required first stopping at Registration and always stopping at Cashier to make payment for these services. Also, after heart surgery in Anchorage, Al returned to CPH for excellent Heart rehab therapy for over a month!

We have come to appreciate having Central Peninsula Hospital right in our community! We appreciate the very helpful employees and medical staff and formed friendships with many -- one of them is Ray Southwell, RN who was our ER nurse on many occasions when we were admitted to the ER. He has always been very accommodating even outside of CPH and we have come to value him as a friend although we do not endorse his view of CPH management. Also, we were equally surprised and impressed that all the executive leaders were very approachable and interacted with us and the public often. CEO David Gilbreath, CEO Ryan Smith and CFO Jason Parot, Bonnie Nichols, etc. It resulted in the same respectful and friendly encounters within and outside the walls of CPH.

Being frequent multi-need patients, we have the privilege to use all those occasions as opportunities to measure the degree of quality and effectiveness of the facilities, the equipment, the services provided, and the caregivers and management of CPH as excellent. The interaction between staff and patients and between staff and management added to our high approval rating of CPH. And, even with this excellent score, we saw more positive improvements in the service and the attitude of some of the staff when CPH adopted the Planetree philosophy.

We have even seen an increase in the number of volunteers over the past two years -- which definitely would not have happened if those volunteers did not like or respect the CPH management. We have been "one" of those volunteers since January 2004 when David Gilbreath was still CEO and continue to enjoy being affiliated with CPH in this capacity.

This being said, we can honestly say that we have never witnessed any traits that even remotely resemble bullying, threats, retaliation, sexual harassment or racial discrimination by any of the management or staff or doctors who treated or interacted with us, or by any supervisory staff or management officials we have ever interacted with so we do not agree with any of the allegations that constantly appear in letters to the editor, at the Borough Assembly meetings, and around this community. Dr. McDonagh was very precise in his assessment and we agree with him regarding the benefits, wide range services, significant progress and CPH values to our community. But we support the Peninsula Clarion and it's writers because we need both sides of the story. They also gave super coverage to the staff's wide majority vote to stay as non-union.

Dr. McDonagh and Kathy Loperman gave us the courage to add our voice in praise of CPH: The CPH Staff, Facilities, Services, the Planetree Philosophy it adopted, and CPH management team. We will continue to support and applaud the decisions and achievements of the of the CPH Management team -- which starts with Ryan Smith and Jason Parot, and the many supervisors of all the departments who constantly have to deal with HR issues. And we will continue to pray for the continued success of Central Peninsula Hospital and its entire staff and volunteers. We are proud to be affiliated with CPH.

Al and Bunny Chong

Soldotna