It has been a little over a month since the latest person to occupy the CEO’s office at Avera St. Mary’s first sat at his new desk.
The ground-floor office is relatively small and its extra-wide door betrays the fact that it once was used for patient care. The office is tucked away in the old hospital building across the street from where most patients are treated and it is, in a word, simple. But it’s where St. Mary’s newest chief executive, Bob Sutton, now spends a great deal of his time surrounded by a few family photos and a lot of work.
“It’s the most hours I’ve worked at any job,” he said. “And it’s the most fun I’ve ever had at any job.”
Just over a month ago Sutton was leading Avera Medical Group’s Community Relations efforts. He was able to do the job from Pierre but it also meant a lot of travel. So when former St. Mary’s Regional President and CEO Paul Ebmeier decided to change jobs, Sutton was the logical choice to replace him. It was a swift transition.
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“I hardly even remember that first three weeks,” Sutton said. “It was just such a whirlwind.”
Much of his time during those early weeks was spent helping celebrate the hospital’s 115th anniversary, working through an accreditation issue and visiting with hospital staff, he said.
“We needed to talk about that,” Sutton said. “And tell our story in the community.”
Sutton also had to deal with an accreditation problem from earlier in the year. Independent hospital accreditation firm Joint Commission had issued a preliminary denial of accreditation over a set of outdated policies in St. Mary’s pharmacy.
Joint Commission returned for its follow-up visit during Sutton’s first few weeks on the job and subsequently gave the hospital a clean bill of health.
From day one, Sutton said, learning how hospital employees of every stripe go about their duties was important to him. He would meet with kitchen staff at 5 a.m. and visit the registration desk in the afternoon and check in to see how hospital staffers care for patients through the night.
“I think now … I’ve at least stuck my head in or spent a few minutes in every department,” Sutton said. “To me, that’s the way you treat your co-workers.”
Sutton is the fifth person to fill the role of CEO in the last six years between full-time administrators and interim CEOs. Ebmeier was on the job for about a year before moving on.
“We have been through a lot of enormous change in the last, I would say, 14 years,” said St. Mary’s Communication Coordinator Amanda Bacon.
In the turmoil from the 2011 flood, the hospital’s transition into the Avera Medical Group and the number of people filling the role of CEO, many employees began wondering where they fit into the hospital’s mission, Bacon said.
Sutton said he is different from the last few CEOs in that he has lived in Pierre for more than 20 years.
“If I can bring one thing here,” he said. “It’s that my family, my wife and I and my kids are residents of Pierre, that St. Mary’s means something to us. Both my kids were born here, all four of us have been hospitalized in this hospital … This is home for us.”
The future of Avera St. Mary’s, Sutton said, will depend on the hospital’s continued growth. Many people in the Pierre area travel to receive care, and some seek services elsewhere that they could get in town. That is something Sutton said he wants to change.
“The question has been asked many times, ‘Should I go to Avera St. Mary’s or should I go somewhere else?’ I’m trying to have that conversation with patients when I can and the community when I can so we can change that question to, ‘Why shouldn’t I go to Avera St. Mary’s?’” Sutton said.
Sutton said the hospital must work to change perceptions but also to add to the services the hospital provides.
“We have to continue to look at what we need here that expands the services that we provide,” he said.
One area that patients have talked about, Sutton said, is adding dermatology, given the amount of outdoor recreation in the area.
“That’s just a good example,” he said.
Another area that has been indentified is behavioral health. The problem in this case is finding the right candidate for the job, Sutton said.
“Recruiting psychiatrists is a very difficult business,” Sutton said, “there aren’t a lot of psychiatrists and getting them to come to any part of the rural United States is not easy.”
The hospital has been able to hire a certified nurse practitioner that focuses on behavioral health.
Another avenue the hospital has been looking at is increasing its ability to treat cancer. St. Mary’s recently hired a new oncologist and has begun the process of creating a cancer treatment center. Any new facility, however, is a long way away and would likely include more than cancer treatment, Sutton said.
For next three months, Sutton said, he will be focused on four key areas. The first is quality and making sure everyone in the hospital makes quality of care a priority. The second is making sure hospital administrators are engaged with the staff. The third is keeping the hospital in a sound financial position given recent changes in the health care system. The fourth are Sutton want to focus on is the hospital’s commitment to the community.
“We need to talk about what we’re doing for quality, we need to talk about how engaged our employees are, we need to talk about the facilities that we have and we just need to continue to let the community know that, while we enjoy being in Pierre, we can’t do all of this without them,” Sutton said.
Date: October 06, 2014