Interim says Newman won’t stagnate
By Bobbi Mlynar
Originally published 01:13 p.m., July 11, 2008
Updated 01:13 p.m., July 11, 2008
Newman Regional Health’s operations won’t stagnate while Joyce Grove Hein serves as interim chief executive officer.
Hein was brought in temporarily on June 30 to replace Terry Lambert, who resigned June 25, effective on that date.
“This is not going to be a situation where everything is going to be put on hold,” said Nancy LeClear, marketing and education director for Newman. “Joyce is not only going to keep things rolling, but is going to move forward.”
Already she has begun working on the hospital’s strategic plan, as well as getting to know hospital managers and employees, asking questions and getting opinions on how the hospital can move forward. She said she is prepared to meet with any employee who wants to talk with her.
“When you’re the new person, you can open up all kinds of doors and peek into closets,” Hein said. “... It’s fun. It’s a lot more fun than sitting in my office, that’s for sure.”
Hein’s “fresh eyes” approach may help the hospital see where improvements and changes need to be made, and where practices need to remain in place. That’s something LeClear appreciates.
“You can’t really stay status-quo in health care,” LeClear said. “It’s moving too fast.”
Hein, who grew up on a farm in western Pennsylvania, has spent much of her career as a health-care manager and retired in 2007 after 27 years as a hospitial administration. She was CEO for eight years at Lakewood Medical Center in Morgan City, La., and seven years at Phelps Memorial Health Center in Holdrege, Neb.
Before she retired last year, she set goals and made plans — a methodology she applies to both her professional and her personal life.
Travel was a major part of her retirement plan. Two days after she officially left Phelps Memorial, she went to Africa to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. To make sure she was prepared for the hike up the mountain, she trained for six months at her local YMCA prior to the trip.
“I saw and touched and felt the snows of Kilimanjaro,” she said, “and they are fading fast.”
She has walked the countryside in Cornwall coast in England, too.
Since then, she’s been to China and is planning a trip to Tibet next year, where she plans to climb up the northeast face of the Himalayas’ Mount Everest to Base Camp 1.
“Once a year, we go somewhere and spend a week, 10 days, hiking,” Hein said. “I’m a big believer that even as we get into our senior years, we can still get off the couch and still do fun things.”
And for Hein, work is fun, too.
“I decided for my retirement strategy, I’d do some part-time, interim work,” Hein said.
Her first assignment for QHR (Quorum Health Resources) began in January, with a three-month stint running a hospital in Hawaii.
Now, Hein has come to Emporia for an estimated three to five months until the recruitment, interviews and the hiring process for a full-time CEO are completed.
“We’re going to take our time because we want it to be the right match for this hospital and this community,” LeClear said.
Hein anticipates the board will do a national search for a new hospital director, though a CEO could come from within QHR current managers or from a Kansas hospital.
“So it’ll be a pretty comprehensive search,” Hein said. “We want to be open to all the avenues about getting out the opportunity to work in this hospital.”
Despite her short time here, through talking with employees and medical staff, she has developed a list of assets that a would-be CEO would find at Newman, as well as in Emporia:
• A good mix of services to the community that will make the CEO job attractive
• Strengths and skills of department leaders
• A very strong physicians’ group
• Financially healthy
• Emporia State University
• Newman serves many smaller communities
• Parks and “plenty of opportunity for recreation”
• A good school system
• Quality of life
“Those are things I think my colleagues look for,” she said.
She has set priorities to keep the hospital moving forward during her tenure as interim chief.
Hein plans to work with the board of trustees on securing a new CEO, work with the staff and physicians on daily issues, fulfill the management plan, and develop a budget for the 2009 fiscal year. Simultaneously, she wants to ensure that area residents have access to local health care.
“We want to make sure people know we’re very committed to serving our community,” Hein said. “(The commitment) doesn’t change when you change somebody in the chair here. That is the overriding objective for all of us.”
She knows about the contention that built in recent months among some physicians, hospital management, staff and the Newman board of trustees, and is prepared to resolve it, rather than leave it to the new CEO.
She is approaching the problem with a focus on building trust and retention among the doctors, with cooperation and compromise coming from both sides.
“Even sometimes little sticky problems, issues we’ve got hanging out there ... we can work on together,” Hein said. “I view us as the old-fashioned three-legged stool. We will have a much more stable stool if we all are equal partners, and I think we can accomplish that.”
Serving the patients and the community will be the primary objective as the factions negotiate a win-win solution for all concerned.
“And when we win-win, the patient wins,” Hein said, “and I think that’s what it’s all about.”