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A Hospital That Does More Than Treat the Sick
Most hospitals wait for you to get sick. Then they treat you and send you home. Sky Lakes Medical Center has a different approach.
“I really don’t want people to be in the hospital,” says David Cauble, president and CEO of Sky Lakes. “We want them in the community, living with their families and enjoying life.”
That philosophy just earned Sky Lakes the Foster G. McGaw Prize, given by the American Hospital Association (AHA) and sponsored by the Baxter Foundation. The prize goes to a hospital or health system that has shown exceptional commitment to the health and well-being of its community not just inside its walls, but out in the neighborhoods where people actually live. These social and environmental factors are reflected in things like food access, safe places to play, jobs, and education.
Sky Lakes was one of four deserving finalists selected from hospitals across the nation. We’re honored and grateful to have won this recognition — the first hospital in Oregon ever to receive it!
Why Sky Lakes Earned the Prize
The award reflects years of hard work rooted in a simple question: What does this community actually need?
Sky Lakes works with more than 50 partners — schools, nonprofits, city and county agencies, farmers, and others — through a network called Healthy Klamath. Together, they go into neighborhoods, host listening sessions, and visit churches and community gatherings to find out where the biggest health gaps are. Then they form action teams and get to work.
Merritt Driscoll, director of the Sky Lakes Foundation and Healthy Klamath, led the award application. She says one piece of feedback from the AHA committee stood out. “They said Sky Lakes is so humble,” Driscoll recalls. “A lot of other health systems, if they built a playground or put public art in an alleyway, would put their logo all over everything. But you don’t see that here. You see the community coming together to create this lasting change.”
That collaborative spirit is reflected in the tagline used across many of Sky Lakes’ community projects: As one, we rise.
A Hospital That Thinks Beyond the Hospital
The application highlighted five focus areas where Sky Lakes and its partners are changing lives: the Wellness Center, food systems, built environment, tobacco prevention, and health career pathways.
But the breadth of Sky Lakes’ work goes even further. Cauble described a mobile health trailer that travels into the remote parts of Klamath County’s 10,000-square-mile service area, bringing a nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant directly to people who struggle to make the trip into town.
“If we can take care out to somebody, they don’t have to make a choice about whether they spend the gas money to come into Klamath Falls,” Cauble says. “Maybe they can stay home, and those resources are available for rent or food or other things they need.”
Meeting people where they are is the kind of thinking that runs through everything Sky Lakes does. Cauble says the inspiration often comes from the success stories themselves. Patients in diabetes classes don’t just learn about managing their condition; they find friends who are on the same journey. A support network forms and people show up for each other.
“The stories are impactful when you actually get somebody whose life has been touched and transformed,” Cauble says. “That inspires other people — their friends, their neighbors, their family — to say, if that person did it, maybe I could too.”
It’s a vision that starts at the top and runs through every level of the organization. Sky Lakes’ mission statement doesn’t say anything about being the greatest hospital. It says Inspiring human potential through better health. That, Cauble says, is the whole point.
He hopes the award puts Klamath Falls on the map in Salem and Washington, D.C., to attract the attention of policymakers who may not know what a rural community can accomplish when it works together.
“We’ve Figured Out Something”
Klamath County faces big challenges: a 20% poverty rate, a doctor-to-patient ratio far below the state average, and health outcomes that rank among the worst in Oregon. Cauble does not shy away from that reality, but he also sees what is possible.
“I won’t say we’ve figured it all out,” Cauble says. “I’ll say we’ve figured out something. We are actively involved in working the problem and trying to make a difference.”
He hopes the award puts Klamath Falls on the map in Salem and Washington, D.C., to attract the attention of policymakers who may not know what a rural community can accomplish when it works together.
The $100,000 Goes Back to Our Community
The Foster G. McGaw Prize comes with a $100,000 award, but Sky Lakes is not keeping it. The exact use of the funds is still being decided, but the intention is clear: “We’re planning to invest it back into the community,” Driscoll says. “We want to make Klamath County a place where people want to come live, work, learn, and play.”
This Is Your Win, Too
Driscoll points out that “It’s not just Sky Lakes’ award. It’s a community award.”
Every partner organization, volunteer, and neighbor who showed up to a listening session or a community garden or a wellness class helped make this happen. The award recognizes all of it.
In Klamath Falls, that change is happening one program and one person at a time.
How Can You Get Involved?
