A scathing review of Thielen Student Student Health Center and its services became public this summer. Unfortunately, the report showed major short falls in the quality of care students were receiving at Thielen.

The report, commissioned by President Steven Leath and the Office of the Senior Vice President of Student Affairs last year, cited major overarching issues in the Student Health Center, such as poor care, including a missed appendicitis case, a lack of leadership and not enough staff.

It is deeply concerning that the single place that was created for students to go to for medical help turned out to be so unreliable and inefficient in recent years. The simple fact that the Student Health Center missed a student’s potentially deadly appendicitis case is frightening and completely unacceptable.

The review was completed by a consulting firm called Keeling & Associates after the previous director of the center, Michelle Hendricks, retired in 2014. Since her retirement, associate vice president for student affairs, Martino Harmon, served as interim director.

After the report pointed out that Harmon had no experience with healthcare and was still serving as the associate vice president as well, the university decided to name Mary Hensley as the next interim director. Hensley has a long history of being a healthcare administrator, including at the university level.

Hiring Hensley, who worked as a director at a University of Minnesota clinic, is the first step to righting this injustice. While the university can’t go back and help the students who did not receive proper care, hiring an experienced leader is the beginning of the long road to rebuilding the ISU community’s trust in the organization.

Since then, Hensley said the Student Health Center has hired certified medical assistants to staff all front desk positions and better determine who should get care and when. She also said the center is currently recruiting additional physicians and nurse practitioners.

In an interview with the Iowa State Daily, president Steven Leath said the university is “moving aggressively” with actions like restaffing the front desk to improve the state of the Student Health Center in the short term.

The university has no other choice but to quickly make drastic improvements because students’ health is at stake. Students — particularly those who are in a new city or away from their parents for the first time — might be forced to go to the Student Health Center for medical care because of the convenient location or a lack of knowledge of other healthcare providers in the Ames area.

ISU students should simply be able to trust their own student healthcare center to take care of them. When the report was released, the Student Health Center was unable to provide adequate care to the students of Iowa State.

In order to improve its trustworthiness, the Student Health Center should continue to be transparent about the issues it faces and how it is working to solve them. As it searches for a new director, the university should make students aware of the process, candidates and exactly what it is looking for in the person who will fill the role.

Finally, the university should make the reviews on the Student Health Center easier to submit and the reporting more accessible. If all students are able to provide reviews or report bad experiences online, perhaps problems can be caught before they become out-of-hand like it has in recent years.