The Rules of Engagement

Outstanding Health Care Executive (Puget Sound Region): Tie

Doctors, administrators, nurses, you name it. They were not happy when their workplace, Puyallup-based Good Samaritan Hospital, was taken over by Tacoma's MultiCare Health System. Newly appointed CEO John Long had a Herculean task ahead of him.

How was he to change the downtrodden culture within an overextended organization and make employees know that he was for real, that the new partnership was for real? He would give them a tower.

"The community had been promised a new hospital for 15 or 20 years, and it [the new facility] just couldn't be pulled off," Long says. "The affiliation enabled us to fulfill that promise. That was the cornerstone of the agreement, to build the tower."

John Long of Tacoma's MultiCare gave the staff of Good Samaritan Hospital a new sense of community by pledging to build a new tower, and then following through.

The $400 million tower, spreading across 350,000 square feet and nine stories, is on track for a 2011 opening-which, Long insists, wouldn't have happened without MultiCare's medical expertise, financial backing and creditworthiness.

But when Long outlined the construction of the tower as a goal, the staff remained skeptical. Long was the hospital's sixth president in six years. Employee morale was not hostile, but it was defeated. So when Long came on board in 2006, he met with every staff member he could and outlined the vision: that MultiCare Good Samaritan would be the trusted regional medical center of choice for every person in east Pierce County. And he set a deadline to achieve that goal.

"This was our vision for 2012," Long says. Administrators translated that into annual targets, and Long kept the staff in the loop. Gradually, things began to change.

Long saw two things in particular. The first was a significant improvement in morale between 2006, when employees gave abysmal scores on a morale survey, and the end of 2007, when the staff offered a phenomenally better response on a similar survey. The second event was the groundbreaking for the tower, and when everyone saw truckloads of steel coming in.

"Some of the greatest cynics felt it was finally happening," Long says. "Even the most cynical of doctors said, 'You know, this is really going to happen.'"

The turnaround in morale at MultiCare Good Samaritan has resulted in new momentum. The quality of care has risen, financial performance has improved and employee satisfaction is high.

"You could call 25 doctors and hear, 'This is a really good place,'" Long says. "It's been a great journey for the staff and community."

 

Engaging with the Mission

Craig Hendrickson expands Overlake's mission.

Overlake Hospital Medical Center in Bellevue has also benefited from substantial new investments. Under the stewardship of CEO Craig Hendrickson, Overlake saw the construction of its $133 million south tower, which increased the hospital's size and capacity by nearly one-third. Hendrickson also supervised off-campus renovation and construction initiatives including refurbishing the Paccar Education Center, expanding and relocating Overlake Medical Center Issaquah, remodeling the Childbirth Center and adding a helipad to support the hospital's Level III Trauma Center. In addition, Hendrickson is guiding the hospital as it heads into a $32 million, fully integrated, electronic medical-record-keeping system.

"The major advantage of that is the ability to transfer more complete information electronically," Hendrickson explains. And with the new helipad in place, Overlake may see more of the patients that are now routinely flown to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

But one of the most crucial programs he introduced to the organization was the launch of a cultural crusade to focus on accountability. He brought in consultants to help define the problems and to establish some basic values that would promote the hospital's mission and vision. Then he followed up with staff training to make sure everyone understood what needed to happen and to engage the employees in the creation and maintenance of that culture.

"In the end, it [Overlake's culture] empowers and engages them in their profession and with the whole organization," Hendrickson says. "When you're working on culture, you're never done with it."

To make sure that the program was effective, Hendrickson had the hospital's health care advisory board develop a survey tool that measures not just job satisfaction but also employee engagement with the culture and mission of the organization. The survey results are too new to draw conclusions. But Hendrickson points out that 88 percent of the 2,500 employees at Overlake took the survey-that in itself is an impressive show of engagement.

 

Runner-Up:

Michael Carter, CEO, Stevens Hospital In the three years that Carter has led Stevens Hospital in Shoreline, he converted the financially hemorrhaging health care provider into a thriving institution and started capital additions and improvements that exceed $18 million. The development and expansion of programs and services in wound healing, women's services, cardiac care and a mother/baby unit rank among the best in the nation.

 

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