Many changes at Enloe

What does it mean to be a good neighbor? For Enloe Medical Center, it means asking employees to park five blocks away, at the Chico Nut plant, rather than on nearby neighborhood streets, when a new stage in the hospital’s expansion project begins Dec. 6 and backhoes take over some of the parking lots.

Interviewed Monday (Nov. 20), interim Enloe CEO Beth O’Brien and Board of Trustees Chairman Darby Makel said even though the hospital was going through an unprecedented period of change, it was doing all it could to maintain openness and transparency in its dealings with “stakeholders"—physicians, nurses, other employees as well as neighbors.

This effort comes in the wake of the punishing conflict earlier this year between its doctors and former CEO Dan Neumeister. Neumeister resigned in July, as did board Chairwoman Betty Dean and Vice Chairman Mark Spelts.

That left the hospital without its leader—and needing to find a new one—just as it was beginning its all-important Century Project expansion, struggling with a shortage of anesthesiologists and bruised by a very public airing of its internal conflicts and criticism that its board had been clueless about them.

“A lot has transpired in the last six months,” Makel said understatedly, but the hospital has continued moving forward. The most important thing, he added, was not to let anything get in the way of the expansion. The need is “undeniable,” he said, and construction costs are escalating daily, so “time is just money.”

The hospital is going through “a period of intense study,” he said. The board is conferring regularly with the medical staff, preparing a 10-year plan and working to figure out how to finance the array of informational and medical technology it will need to outfit the expanded hospital.

In addition, the search for a new CEO is “moving along nicely” and should be completed no later than next summer. Consultations with stakeholders—including a community forum—about what to look for in a leader, as well as O’Brien’s influence, are going into the process.

“We’re looking for a collaborative person,” Makel said. “The lesson of the past year is that the stakeholders can get out of alignment with each other, and the organization can’t function if that’s the case.”

The anesthesia group is now up to five full-timers, augmented by temporary doctors, O’Brien said, and is recruiting to get to 12-13 full-timers. (The previous anesthesiology group, AAC, had as many as 16 doctors.) The hospital is also working with physicians on new, creative ways to assure sufficient on-call physician coverage in the emergency room.

O’Brien stressed the quality of physician care in Chico and reiterated that the most important thing is to move forward with the expansion. “There’s a tremendous shortage in every [medical] specialty,” she said, and if Chico wants to be able to recruit the best young doctors, it needs a hospital that meets their needs.