At 12:01 a.m. June 1, 1996, the Midwest City Memorial Hospital Authority handed off Midwest Regional Medical Center to its new lessee.

At that time, some 17 plus years ago, I can only assume that when Authority members reflected on their decision, they were pleased with themselves for choosing Health Management Associates to run the hospital.

And why not?

Today, we know that their decision ultimately paved the way for the thriving Town Square shopping district on SE 29th Street when HMA paid the Authority $80 million to lease MRMC. It also probably was a big relief for the Authority to pay off the debt they had accumulated over 34 years from operating the hospital and to turn over operations to a seasoned corporation that had been running hospitals the past 19 years.

I’ve been told that HMA appeared to Authority members like Mayor Eddie Reed, who signed the lease agreement between the authority and HMA, as going to do great things at MRMC. Plus, HMA was an outsider to the Oklahoma City metro medical community. This alludes to the supposed allegation that the authority at the time had a fear of MRMC being bought out by a metro hospital chain.

For many, many years, HMA satisfied the community’s medical needs, but somewhere along the way, things started to go seriously wrong. Some assert that the hospital chains’ business model changed, which ultimately caused Midwest Regional’s reputation to wither away to a point it was unrecognizable this past year.

On Tuesday, a different set of Hospital Authority members found themselves pondering the next lessee of MRMC. Unlike in 1996, this time I would venture to say that how much money was going to be made off of the deal really was not part of the equation.

Instead, as Mayor Jack Fry put it, the main focus was on the necessity for the culture to change at Midwest Regional and for the hospital to once again provide quality healthcare for Eastern Oklahoma County residents.

The mayor has said all along he desires for MRMC to be the hospital of choice for local residents. After Tuesday’s meeting, I believe the Authority is determined to never again allow a lessee to run the hospital into the ground, as long as they have a say-so in the matter.

Throughout our coverage of this story, I’ve noticed that the overall circumstances facing today’s Authority members are vastly different than that in 1996. This time around there is an intense pressure on members to complete the lessee decision process in a strict timeframe.

And so far I’ve been very impressed with the city’s due diligence in this matter, how thorough they have been and how they have kept their word to the people of Midwest City.

I hope my comments about the 1996 Authority does not suggest that today’s headache could have prevented if more thought was put into their decision. I think they did the best they could at the time and were acting in the city’s best interest.

I would point out that today’s members have an advantage over Mayor Reed and the rest of the 1996 Authority. They have been able to access funds made possible by the original lease agreement to hire a consultant firm to assist them and this has proven to be very helpful.

In a recent editorial of mine, I wrote that city officials sometimes point out that they’re not responsible for certain decisions. What I should have also said is that city officials often times rely back on the decisions and even mistakes of their predecessors.

I am going to now predict that whenever the time comes years from now for another hospital lessee process to play out, Authority members will draw upon the decisions made by their predecessors in 1996 and 2014.

I sincerely hope that at that time the issues those members face will have no resemblance to what is being discussed right now, and the city’s profit margin plays no part in the quest for a quality hospital for all EOC residents.