John Haupert grew up roaming hospital halls. His parents were on the board of Mercy Hospital Fort Smith (Ark.), formerly St. Edward Mercy Medical Center, where Mr. Haupert was born and where many of his family members worked as physicians. It was also the place where he secured his first healthcare job as an orderly in 1978.
Flash forward nearly 40 years, and Mr. Haupert now heads Atlanta-based Grady Health System as president and CEO, where he has led an impressive financial and cultural turnaround. When Mr. Haupert took over at Grady in late 2011, the safety-net hospital system was hemorrhaging money — in 2011, it recorded a $27 million net loss. Over the course of six years, Mr. Haupert and his team were able to get the health system back on its feet. Since Mr. Haupert has been CEO, Grady revamped revenue cycle management, adopted an EHR, completed a $76 million emergency department renovation and expansion and operated in the black every year, beginning in 2012. In 2016, Grady Health System posted $44.3 million in profits.
Mr. Haupert came to Grady from Parkland Health and Hospital System in Dallas, where he served as executive vice president and COO since 2006. Prior to his appointment at Parkland, Mr. Haupert held several administrative roles throughout Dallas-based Methodist Health System, where he got his start in healthcare management in 1992.
Mr. Haupert is a fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives and holds a master's degree in healthcare administration from Trinity University in San Antonio, where he also earned his bachelor's degree. This year, he was named to serve a three-year term on the board of the American Hospital Association, beginning in January 2018.
Here, Mr. Haupert took the time to answer Becker's seven questions.
Editor's note: Responses have been edited lightly for length and style.
Question: What's one thing that really piqued your interest in healthcare?
John Haupert: Being a business and finance major in college, I was always looking for a direction I could go with those degrees that would also serve a strong social purpose. For me it was very important I use the skills I developed in college and throughout life — my planning, management and finance skills — to serve a bigger mission. I knew I really wasn't cut out to be in investment banking, manufacturing or sales. It had to be something that brought those two skill sets together. Healthcare to me was the solution. It didn't hurt that I grew up in a medical family, with parents who served on the board of the local hospital. I spent many a year roaming the halls of the place, got to know the CEO over time and loved the environment, but ultimately it was really more of a personal mission.
Q: What do you enjoy most about Atlanta?
JH: There's a lot to like about Atlanta. It's a big city built in the middle of a forest, so it's incredibly green. When you fly over Atlanta, you really don't see the houses, you see the trees. It's green; it's hilly, with lots of lakes and ponds. As far as topography, it's just a beautiful place to live. It also means it's cooler than other places I've lived in my life, such as Arkansas and Texas.
On top of that, it's incredibly, richly diverse — uniquely diverse, I think, in large cities across the country. I love the history and the parallel this institution, Grady, has had along with the Civil Rights Movement. It's a prosperous city with lots of positive growth and opportunity for lots of different people. It's really a growing, thriving community, which means there are a lot of fun things to do, sports-wise, arts-wise, food-wise. I lived in Dallas for 20 years and thought that was the end-all, be-all. I love Dallas, but if I had to choose one, I'd choose Atlanta.
Q: If you could eliminate one of the healthcare industry's problems overnight, which would it be?
JH: Among the hundreds of things that need to be addressed, I would eliminate access issues. We have a very developed healthcare system in this country that is not accessible to all people, and sometimes it's not even accessible to people who have insurance, or Medicare or Medicaid.
Q: What do you consider your greatest talent or skill outside of the C-suite?
JH: My greatest talent or skill outside of the C-suite is working hard to maintain balance in life and making sure, because I have this demanding of a job, that my family and extended family are not neglected by me because of that. And that takes a lot of doing and energy and effort, but that's really where life is lived. It's incredibly important to me.
Q: How do you revitalize yourself?
JH: The way I really revitalize myself is taking trips to the mountains, usually to Santa Fe, N.M., to "get away from it" and revitalize. We go hiking; we also work with abused and abandoned horses, helping them recover, taking care of them, training them. The other way I revitalize myself is through my at-home time. Being at home with family, just living at home here in Atlanta, is very revitalizing to me.
Q: What's one piece of advice you remember most clearly?
JH: People are the most important asset you have in any business. The way that applies here, or in healthcare period, is if you don't create a culture that's highly engaging for physicians, staff and employees of all kinds you are not going to be able to provide the level of care you should to your patients. In some ways — although it's somewhat unpopular to say — the patient benefits from that work as well. You can have every initiative in the world to drive quality improvement and patient experience, but if you haven't done the hard work around creating a highly engaged workforce and the culture that goes with that, I don't think you will ever get there.
Q: What do you consider your greatest achievement at Grady Health System so far?
JH: My greatest achievement has been recruiting the right people who, along with me, led the turnaround of an organization that was about to fail. You try to find people who have really solid experience, but their emotional intelligence also has to be aligned with the organization's values. It's finding the executives who have both. Sometimes leaders are really good at what they do and can get results, but if they leave a wake of carnage in their path, they're really not doing their job and they're not contributing to the development of the culture. I was very fortunate to find people who were up for the challenge and fit both definitions. Plus, quite a few were already here.
Knowing that you — particularly on the financial front, but also on the patient experience and equality front — have taken a critical, vital organization to a community and turned it around so it can sustain it's mission…that's very gratifying.
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