Jay Henry, CEO of St. Charles Bend
Q Tell us something about your company and your role in the company.
As CEO for St. Charles Bend, it is my privilege to operate the hospital that serves patients throughout Central and Eastern Oregon for their tertiary care needs. We work with the great hospitals in Redmond, Prineville, Madras, John Day, Burns, Klamath Falls, The Dalles and Lakeview to take care of their sickest, most complex patients. I am also helping to lead a key part of our transformation toward a more integrated approach to care. Simply put, we have designed a new delivery model called Centers of Care that will improve the coordination of services around a particular disease or service grouping. Each one of these Centers of Care will be co-led by leadership team that will be accountable to coordinate a smooth continuum of care, improve community health, enhance patient care and decrease the cost of care.
Q What was your first job?
Lifeguard.
Q What is the growth potential for your company and your industry in general?
Tremendous. Health care will be very different in the future, but the growth potential
is significant.
Q What has been your company’s greatest challenge?
Our industry rewards and pays us for taking care of people when they are sick. We must begin to work more closely with the public, physician community, hospitals, employers and others in the industry to design a system that rewards and pays us for keeping people healthy. Our Centers of Care model is a bold step in this direction.
Q Please share your thoughts on what Central Oregon could do to make the region more business friendly.
I believe that we as a community should strive to become the healthiest community in the nation. Businesses want to have employees who are happy, healthy and well balanced. We have great schools and a wonderful place to live. If we can show a prospective company that its employees’ health will actually improve if they relocate to Central Oregon, we will be more appealing. Healthier employees are more productive, have fewer injuries, use less sick time and create a great working culture. A CEO in any industry would value these things.
Q What is the biggest highlight of your career?
I came into this industry on a stretcher. Having a poor patient experience in my teens lit a fire under me to transform the health care industry. The highlight of my career – and any workday – is when our organization is able to provide a warm, compassionate, clinically excellent experience for those in need. That’s what keeps me coming to work every morning.
Q What has been or is the biggest challenge in your company and/or industry?
The health care industry needs to undergo significant change. The national changes being proposed right now don’t truly address the core issue. We should design a system that rewards health care providers for keeping people healthy, not taking care of them once they are already sick. There is great collaborative creativity happening within our local region with the Central Oregon Health Council, Health Matters and others. It is these types of grassroots initiatives that will likely bring the greatest ideas for design change to fruition.
Q What advice would you give to other leaders with regard to managing a growing company?
Innovation is the key to long-term success. You must keep constantly evolving and changing. As a leader, you must remain centered during all of that change and stick to your principles and values.
Q What do you do to relax? How do you spend your weekend, your vacations?
I enjoy fly fishing, skiing, cycling and surfing.
Q Tell us something about you few people know about – your favorite pastime, worst indulgence?
Playing hooky on a deep powder day.
Q In terms of volunteering, what is your personal or company’s contribution to the community?
I truly enjoy being a member of the Greater Bend Rotary Club. It is a wonderful organization that makes a difference in this community. My organization, St. Charles Bend, gives back to the community in a tremendous way. Last year alone, we provided about $58.2 million in unreimbursed care, including $39.5 million in charity care.
Jim Diegel, CEO of St. Charles Health System
Q Tell us something about your company and your role in the company.
Since 2006, I have been president and CEO of St. Charles Health System, a private, nonprofit health care delivery system whose mission is to improve the health of those we serve in a spirit of love and compassion. We provide a full range of quality, evidence-based health care services in the tri-county region and within a 32,000-square-mile referral area in Central and Eastern Oregon. We’re dedicated to achieving the three goals of what the Institute for Healthcare Improvement calls the Triple Aim: better health, better care and lower costs.
Q What was your first job?
My first job was on the family wheat farm in Michigan. My first health care job was that of an emergency department volunteer at South Macomb Hospital in Warren, Mich., in 1978 and then an emergency department technician at William Beaumont Hosptial in Royal Oak, Mich., from 1979-1981.
Q What is the growth potential for your company and your industry in general?
Health care in general will continue to be a high-growth industry, in part because the wave of aging baby boomers will require more health care services than any other generation of Americans. While the boomers will enjoy their later years, they’ll also be managing more chronic conditions. Between now and 2018, health care will generate about 22 percent of all wage and salary jobs added to the economy during that period, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Hospitals are the largest but slowest growing segment of the industry, with employment growth projected at a more modest ten percent.
Q What has been your company’s greatest challenge?
St. Charles Health System — and the health care industry at large — is being shaped by mounting pressure to contain costs. Enrollment in managed care programs continues to grow at the same time we’re seeing a dramatic shift in our payer mix. This has prompted us to tighten our belts and restructure our organization so that we’re delivering better and more care at the same time we’re containing or reducing costs.
Q Please share your thoughts on what Central Oregon could do to make the region more business friendly.
Central Oregon businesses are struggling to offer health care coverage to their employees because of the high cost. To put it into perspective: between 1999 and 2007, health insurance premiums increased 114 percent, while the average household income only grew by 27 percent. Part of what’s driving premiums through the roof is the high utilization of health care by people with chronic conditions. We, as a community, need to focus more on disease prevention — eating well, exercising and establishing a good relationship with a primary care doctor — to help make insurance more affordable and ease the financial pressures on our local businesses.
Q What is the biggest highlight of your career?
Outside of having the privilege to lead St. Charles Health System, my appointment to the American Hospital Association board of trustees last year is a once in a career opportunity to serve our industry and be involved in health care policy development at the national level.
Q What has been or is the biggest challenge in your company and/or industry?
The sputtering economy has taken a toll on businesses, which in turn have had to lay off some of their employees. Many of those people have lost their commercial insurance and are now enrolled in our state Medicaid program — the Oregon Health Plan — which reimburses us for a fraction of our costs. The impact on St. Charles Health System is profound: for every one percent reduction in commercially insured patients, we lose $8 million in net revenue. We are adjusting to this economic reality and making changes in our organization to ensure St. Charles has a healthy future.
Q What advice would you give to other leaders with regard to managing a growing company?
In a rapidly changing business environment like health care, it’s important for leaders to stay true to their companies’ values even as they navigate constant change and uncertainty about the future. Steve Jobs, who made Apple one of the most valuable technology companies in the world, inspired and innovated to achieve one goal: make products that the everyday person could easily use. At St. Charles, providing high-quality, compassionate health care drives what we do. Our patients are at the very center of the decisions we make no matter what the issue.
Q What do you do to relax? How do you spend your weekend, your vacations?
My wife and I are empty-nesters and as such, we spend a lot of time together. I like to read, exercise, play golf with Vicky, tool around Lake Billy Chinook in our old boat and occasionally play tennis. Once a year, we usually travel to the Philippines to visit Vicky’s family.
