Haaland visits Gallup hospital, pledges action on rural staffing shortages

Deb Haaland walked into Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health Care Services in Gallup with a warning that is familiar to many McKinley County families: when the staff is short, care disappears, waits grow longer, and patients travel farther for treatment. The former Interior secretary, now running for governor, used the hospital visit to press her pledge to strengthen rural health care, pointing to the daily strain on emergency care, primary care and specialty access in northwest New Mexico.

The hospital has become a symbol of how fragile rural medicine can be. By late 2022, Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health Care Services had closed its labor and delivery unit and lost most of its primary care doctors. At the time, McKinley County was recording the largest primary care provider deficit in rural New Mexico, leaving many residents in one of the state’s most predominantly Navajo counties to look outside Gallup for basic care.

The staffing crisis has been severe. In 2022, the Community Health Action Group in Gallup estimated 60% nurse turnover and 40% turnover among permanent physicians at the hospital over the previous two years. That churn helped push local physicians to create a primary care clinic after services at the former hospital began to shutter, a sign that private doctors were trying to fill gaps the hospital could not.

Financial instability has compounded the problem. In May 2024, hospital leadership told lawmakers the facility was millions of dollars in debt, unable to pay employees at times, and facing a major malpractice judgment. One report put the judgment at $68 million; another said a bond of more than $100 million had been ordered in the case. Later, the hospital said it had nearly erased $34 million in debt and planned to reinvest in infrastructure, workforce and patient services. It also received Critical Access Hospital accreditation in late 2024 or early 2025.

Haaland’s message in Gallup tied that local struggle to a broader policy agenda. She has said she would protect Medicaid, recruit providers, expand rural and tribal health access, and lower prescription drug costs if elected governor. The stakes are high well beyond Gallup: as of July 11, 195 rural hospitals nationwide had shuttered inpatient units or closed altogether since 2005, underscoring how quickly a staffing shortage can become a community emergency.