District hires new CEO, appoints board member to fill Hahn’s seat
Two women – incoming Chief Executive Officer Nancy Schmid and new board member Sue Campbell – are moving into leadership positions at Healdsburg District Hospital.
“It’s wonderful to have power players on your team,” said North Sonoma County Healthcare District Chair of the Board E.J. Neil.
Both women will bring decades of hospital management experience to their new positions, as well as specific experience with electronic medical record implementation, a process that Healdsburg District Hospital is poised to undertake.
New CEO Nancy Schmid
Nancy Schmid will assume the role of CEO of Healdsburg District Hospital beginning May 1. She will be moving from Oklahoma, where she has been serving as CEO of Kingfisher Regional Hospital for the past three years. Prior to that, from 2008 to 2010, Schmid was CEO of East Morgan County Hospital in Brush, Colorado.
“She’s got good experience with small hospitals. She’s also extremely intelligent and a very fast study. We think she’s going to do a good job. We’re happy to have her,” Neil said.
Schmid made it through a long CEO selection process that began in the fall of 2012.
“We started this back in September. There were 78 candidates. This was a lengthy and pretty exhaustive process,” Neil said.
Schmid’s path to becoming a Chief Executive Officer could also be described as lengthy and exhaustive.
“Interestingly, I never started out to be a CEO,” Schmid said. “What really changed for me, I worked at the University of Utah hospital on rehabilitation when I had a sick child, a daughter that was born ill. To maintain health insurance – and this was before healthcare portability – I ended up leaving the university and going to work for Intermountain Healthcare for insurance reasons. That led me on the path to becoming a CEO. And by the way my daughter is very, very well now.”
Schmid noted that her daughter’s illness gave her a unique and lasting perspective on healthcare.
“It also gave me the unique perspective from a patient family, from a mother, what healthcare is like when you face not being insured and the high medical bills,” Schmid said.
Schmid’s passion lies in rural healthcare, and she brings extensive experience working in and with rural hospitals. Schmid said she is ready to tackle the challenges that Healdsburg District Hospital faces — challenges which include increased local competition as well as the electronic medical record implementation project, known as Care Transformation.
“I think the community is our most important partner. My door is open to anyone in that community so we can make the hospital a better place for everyone to come and get services. I have always been very involved in the communities that the hospital I work in serves. I want to do that. When I walked around town and met many people, they all talk about the hospital. They all loved the hospital. I think it’s important that we keep patient satisfaction high and we keep the hospital in the forethought of the community members,” Schmid said.
New Board Member Sue Campbell
Sue Campbell and her husband John McKinney —who serves on the Alliance Medical Center board — moved to Healdsburg six years ago. Campbell was appointed to the board to fill the vacancy left by Kurt Hahn’s retirement.
“She was a very strong candidate [for the board] because she has vast experience in information systems installed in hospitals,” said NSCHD board member Bill Hawn.
“I’m really happy to have Sue and I think she’s going to bring a lot of experience, background, community interest and skills that the board can use and she will be a strong addition to the hospital.”
Board chair E.J. Neil agreed.
“For the challenges we’re facing right now, it was a very, very good fit… She’s a powerhouse. She’s well known, well liked, and very capable,” Neil said.
Campbell brings previous experience serving on a hospital board, as well as a long career in healthcare, to her work at NSCHD.
“Professionally, I spent 23 years at a company that’s now called Accenture. I was a healthcare consultant working mostly in hospitals. When I retired I missed healthcare, so I started looking around for board opportunities and potentially work too,” Campbell said.
After “retiring” from her work in healthcare information systems management, Campbell spent three years working on HealthConnect, Kaiser’s electronic medical records system.
She served on the board of St. Francis Memorial Hospital for nine years, in addition to serving on committees for the hospital’s parent organization, Dignity Health. Campbell concluded her final term on the St. Francis board and immediately jumped at the opportunity to serve her local hospital.
“It’s important to help a local facility, it’s more meaningful,” Campbell said.
“I am the kind of person that just likes to give back to my community.”
Campbell noted that she was looking forward to helping the hospital rise to meet challenges in the coming years, particularly in the realm of electronic medical record implementation.
“I really have a strong belief in the Care Transformation [electronic medical record implementation] project. It’s very important for the hospital to install this electronic medical record system before 2015, which is a point in time where federal funding will stop and the hospital will be penalized if they don’t have this. There’s millions of dollars at stake,” Campbell said.
Campbell noted that the hospital would be fundraising via the Healthcare Foundation Northern Sonoma County in order to raise money for the medical records implementation project.
For the past five years, the NSCHD board members and CEO have been men. Schmid will be the first post-district-formation female CEO. Campbell is the first woman on the board since 2008. From 2002 to 2008, there was always one woman on the five-member board: Marjorie L. Smith, Marianne Machill, Cathy Sinclair, and most recently Ruth Olson.
