by Joe Wilhelm Jr.
Staff Writer
He’s past the whirlwind of moving to a new city for a job, but the work hasn’t let up for St. Vincent’s HealthCare President and CEO Moody Chisholm Jr.
Looking over the past year, Chisholm is proud of what the organization has been able to accomplish.
His top goals were to re-energize associates and physicians toward expanding the ministry’s mission, grow its coverage in the market, improve its quality and complete the leadership team.
“The goal here is to motivate the performance culture to be responsive, with a bias to pre-emptive action,” said Chisholm. “In other words, a bias to action that prevents problems and anticipates needs in the organization.”
He joined St. Vincent’s HealthCare April 5, 2010, after serving as CEO of Manatee Healthcare System and vice president of the Acute Care Division of Universal Health Services in Bradenton.
One of the first orders of business was to clean the facilities from top to bottom, repave Shircliff Way, pressure-wash garages and hire a new landscaping service.
Chisholm also pushed to expand the outreach to patients who are discharged from the hospital.
“We are expanding our ability to contact patients after discharge from the hospital so, in the near future, we will be able to contact every patient, inpatient or outpatient, after they have had treatment here. We will be following up with them by phone to see how they are doing,” said Chisholm.
Along with energizing staff, Chisholm wanted to increase staff.
“We continue to work to expand our employed and aligned physician network. Our employed primary care physicians are up 60 percent from a year ago. Our overall physician network, including PCPs (primary care physicians) and specialists, has tripled in size,” said Chisholm.
Another focus of Chisholm’s first year was St. Luke’s Hospital.
“Growing St. Luke’s Hospital has been a big focus for me,” he said.
Moody said admissions are up 19 percent and surgical volume is up 55 percent.
“Our overall ministry (St. Luke’s, St. Catherine’s and St. Vincent’s) admissions are up 6 percent and overall surgical volumes are up 8 percent,” said Chisholm.
There have been successes in his first year, but Chisholm had hoped the project to build a 70-90-bed hospital in Clay County would have been farther along by now.
“We’ve broken ground in Clay County. If there was a failure in the first year, it is that I don’t have the building already coming out of the ground. It has been a frustration for me, but the process is a slow process,” said Chisholm.
The facility will offer emergency, inpatient and outpatient services, but Chisholm sees the latter being the main function of the “hospital of the future.”
“New hospitals will be focused on outpatient care. Our goal is to reduce the need for inpatient care,” said Chisholm. “It will be set up to be an efficient future health facility.”
The hospital is scheduled to be completed by fall of 2013.
St. Vincent’s HealthCare was founded by the Daughters of Charity in 1916 to provide health services to the sick and poor of North Florida.
St. Vincent’s HealthCare is a member of Ascension Health, the nation’s largest Catholic and nonprofit health system.
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