Robert Allen, CEO of 26-bed Park City (Utah) Medical Center, part of Intermountian Healthcare, oversaw the hospital's recent opening in February and has been part of the hospital's development since becoming CEO in April 2008.
Q: What, specifically, has been your role in the development of Park City Medical Center?
Robert Allen: My history with the project is that I came on board a year and half before the hospital opened, but the hospital's development had been in the works for 10 years. A local group of physicians in Park City got together to try to develop a hospital in the community. There had been no hospital in the area since the 1980s and no hospital in Park City since the 1950s. As you might imagine, the area experienced a lot of growth after the Olympics in 2002, and the area was due for expanded healthcare services. The physicians and community leaders performed a feasibility study and then began a RFP process to look for a partnering opportunity. They eventually decided to bring in Intermountain to develop and operate the facility.
I was encouraged to apply for the CEO position here by Jon Hoopes [vice president of Intermountain's Rural Region at the time] who worked closely on the project. At first blush I wasn't sure if it was the right opportunity for me, since I had already overseen much larger facilities. However, the more he showed me the plans for the hospital, its history of development and its potential over time, the more I found the opportunity extremely intriguing and was eventually selected for the position.
Q: What was the biggest challenge for you as you worked to prepare the hospital for its opening?
RA: Because I came in after construction was underway, my biggest challenge has been selecting a leadership team and developing a medical staff structure, but this has also been one of the most rewarding aspects of the project. When you are building a replacement facility, you are carrying over leadership and structure, but here I was the leadership team. It's very rare that you get to personally select every one of your key leaders so that was a very fun process for me. Once those leaders were selected we sat down and really tried to create the vision we had for the hospital, which we tested with the hospital board to make sure it was consistent. Our focus is really on clinical excellence, and that is the platform on which we build all our services.
Developing that vision set the stage for [those leaders] to hire their staff. We had a significant amount of interest in the positions. We currently have about 230 employees and had more than 5,000 applicants for those positions. The strength of the leadership we have here at PCMC is one of my proudest accomplishments. The great team we've assembled amazes me every day with their commitment to each other, to patients and to the community. It's just astounding.
Developing a medical staff structure was also challenging. Because we are a resort town, there were many physicians interested in being affiliated with our hospital. Many of the local physicians had also not admitted their own patients in some time because there was not a close hospital and instead referred patients to other physicians. We wanted to make sure that the physicians practicing here could be supported, so we looked at the needs of our community and the types of services it could support. We eventually developed a medical staff plan that in some cases limits physicians in certain specialties. This is intended to help manage growth and create an environment that is sustainable. If we bring physicians here and there is no population to sustain all of them, then we lose everyone.
Q: What is the most important lesson you have learned as part of opening a new hospital?
RA: One thing I learned through this process is that I needed a deeper history of the project before coming on. I don't know how you would get that given the situation, but it would have been tremendously helpful. There was a steep learning curve for me having come in after so much development had already taken place.
Q: What has been the most rewarding part of your involvement with PCMC?
RA: When you put that much energy and time into a project and you eventually are able to see patients coming here for treatment and are able to talk to them, that is truly rewarding. When a patient here talks of the excellent care they have received and of their experiences with staff that cared for them and about them, it is really rewarding. I sometimes think would I really want to go through all of that work again? But the reward at the end makes the time and effort worth it.
Q: What advice would you have to others involved in the development of a new hospital?
RA: Over my career, I've heard this advice many times, but it is the core of success in healthcare and developing or opening a new hospital. There are countless points of disagreement and challenges that you will be up against, but ultimately the focus must be on the patient, the community and their needs. This is the best, most important consideration to build your decisions upon. Focusing on that will lead you very effectively toward the end goal of a successful hospital to serve the community. When our staff and leadership differed, this is the core point that always brought us back together.
Learn more about Park City Medical Center.
Q: What, specifically, has been your role in the development of Park City Medical Center?
Robert Allen: My history with the project is that I came on board a year and half before the hospital opened, but the hospital's development had been in the works for 10 years. A local group of physicians in Park City got together to try to develop a hospital in the community. There had been no hospital in the area since the 1980s and no hospital in Park City since the 1950s. As you might imagine, the area experienced a lot of growth after the Olympics in 2002, and the area was due for expanded healthcare services. The physicians and community leaders performed a feasibility study and then began a RFP process to look for a partnering opportunity. They eventually decided to bring in Intermountain to develop and operate the facility.I was encouraged to apply for the CEO position here by Jon Hoopes [vice president of Intermountain's Rural Region at the time] who worked closely on the project. At first blush I wasn't sure if it was the right opportunity for me, since I had already overseen much larger facilities. However, the more he showed me the plans for the hospital, its history of development and its potential over time, the more I found the opportunity extremely intriguing and was eventually selected for the position.
Q: What was the biggest challenge for you as you worked to prepare the hospital for its opening?
RA: Because I came in after construction was underway, my biggest challenge has been selecting a leadership team and developing a medical staff structure, but this has also been one of the most rewarding aspects of the project. When you are building a replacement facility, you are carrying over leadership and structure, but here I was the leadership team. It's very rare that you get to personally select every one of your key leaders so that was a very fun process for me. Once those leaders were selected we sat down and really tried to create the vision we had for the hospital, which we tested with the hospital board to make sure it was consistent. Our focus is really on clinical excellence, and that is the platform on which we build all our services.
Developing that vision set the stage for [those leaders] to hire their staff. We had a significant amount of interest in the positions. We currently have about 230 employees and had more than 5,000 applicants for those positions. The strength of the leadership we have here at PCMC is one of my proudest accomplishments. The great team we've assembled amazes me every day with their commitment to each other, to patients and to the community. It's just astounding.
Developing a medical staff structure was also challenging. Because we are a resort town, there were many physicians interested in being affiliated with our hospital. Many of the local physicians had also not admitted their own patients in some time because there was not a close hospital and instead referred patients to other physicians. We wanted to make sure that the physicians practicing here could be supported, so we looked at the needs of our community and the types of services it could support. We eventually developed a medical staff plan that in some cases limits physicians in certain specialties. This is intended to help manage growth and create an environment that is sustainable. If we bring physicians here and there is no population to sustain all of them, then we lose everyone.
Q: What is the most important lesson you have learned as part of opening a new hospital?
RA: One thing I learned through this process is that I needed a deeper history of the project before coming on. I don't know how you would get that given the situation, but it would have been tremendously helpful. There was a steep learning curve for me having come in after so much development had already taken place.
Q: What has been the most rewarding part of your involvement with PCMC?
RA: When you put that much energy and time into a project and you eventually are able to see patients coming here for treatment and are able to talk to them, that is truly rewarding. When a patient here talks of the excellent care they have received and of their experiences with staff that cared for them and about them, it is really rewarding. I sometimes think would I really want to go through all of that work again? But the reward at the end makes the time and effort worth it.
Q: What advice would you have to others involved in the development of a new hospital?
RA: Over my career, I've heard this advice many times, but it is the core of success in healthcare and developing or opening a new hospital. There are countless points of disagreement and challenges that you will be up against, but ultimately the focus must be on the patient, the community and their needs. This is the best, most important consideration to build your decisions upon. Focusing on that will lead you very effectively toward the end goal of a successful hospital to serve the community. When our staff and leadership differed, this is the core point that always brought us back together.
Learn more about Park City Medical Center.
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