Mesa View CEO Sees Hospital As Growth Opportunity

By VERNON ROBISON

The Progress

On his first day on the job, last December, new Mesa View Regional Hospital (MVRH) CEO Kelly Adams gathered his executive team together for an introductory meeting.

“Every time you meet with anyone in this hospital, there is a centerpiece in front of you on the table, and that is the patient,” Adams said in that meeting. “Secondly it is our staff, to make sure that they have what they need to provide care. And third, we are all about community.”

In a recent interview with The Progress, Adams said that these are truly the principles upon which he operates.

“There is so much noise in the world, and it is easy to get distracted,” Adams said. “So it is important that we stay close to our mission. And our mission, as a hospital, is health care. The patient and community is right in the middle of all of that.”

In the nearly three months since he took over the reins at the hospital, Adams has exhibited that focus on patient and community. He has rebuilt positive relationships with the City of Mesquite, repaired some long-standing rough spots in those relations, and has formed partnerships that could scarcely have been imagined before his coming.

One of the best manifestations of this has been in the series of ongoing vaccination clinics for the general public that have been considered great successes.

Adams said that these successes came from a whole-community effort. “We have helped put together this community vaccination program,” he said. “And I tell you, we couldn’t have a better relationship with the City and with the Eureka. With all of those partners it has been so well organized and just on-the-spot.”

Adams was encouraged to see so much potential when he came to MVRH at the end of last year.
“I came and looked around and recognized pretty quickly that this is not a slash-and-burn situation at this hospital,” Adams said. “Rather, this is an incremental growth opportunity.”

Along with that observation, one of the first things Adams noticed was a significant rate of out-migration for local patients seeking care in surrounding communities. This has become a primary point of focus for him and his staff.

“There are a whole host of reasons for that out-migration,” Adams said. “But if we can begin to identify what those reasons are, and bring the right resources here; meaning physicians and staff; then we can start to turn that back again.”

To do that, Adams has been doing an epidemiology study to show what diseases are most common in the community and whether there are local services to treat them at MVRH.

“We have gotten the results from that study and now we are starting to develop a plan to answer those needs,” Adams said.

Part of that plan must include recruiting physicians and providers to treat the community in those service lines.

“Once you see what kind of services are most needed, then you have to get the right kind of physicians to answer those needs,” Adams said. “As the CEO, one of my important roles is to go out and recruit those providers needed to treat the community.”

Adams said that, for a community like Mesquite, that is not as difficult as it sounds. “There is quite a network of providers, especially in the colder countries, that are saying ‘enough is enough’,” Adams said.

“In fact, I recently had a surgery practitioner call me and said, ‘Look, I have had enough of my snow shovel. What do you have for me?’ So that is where we are seeing a lot of early success.”

Adams also acknowledged that there is a lot of work to do to ensure that the community has enough primary care providers available. It was an unexpected shortage in those primary care providers last March that became a major factor in having to close the Mesquite Quick Care facility, he said.

Getting that facility back up and running within the next month or so is another one of his most immediate goals, he added.

“It is a thing where people are not sick in six weeks when they can get an appointment, they are sick today,” Adams said. “They need to be taken care of now. So recruiting primary care is a big piece we must take care of to stem part of that out-migration.”

Adams said that he was excited about the potential for steady growth in the hospital and by what a stable institution MVRH is to the community.

“I have been really impressed with it, and people need to know that this is a solid hospital,” Adams said. “It is the right size for the community and it is nimble with a really great team. And I just couldn’t be more pleased to be here.”