Joyce Zimowski takes HFMA beyond the numbers: numbers may be in the blood of Joyce A. Zimowski, FHFMA, CPA, but her experience and energy have led her to learn that financial management can be hard to quantify

Healthcare Financial Management, June, 2004

Even in school, Joyce Zimowski displayed the two main characteristics that would lead to her becoming HFMA's 54th National Chairman. One is a willingness to get involved. The other is a facility for financial management.

A native of Chautauqua, N.Y., Zimowski attended a high school that was small in size but large in opportunity. "If you had the desire to do something, you could do it," Zimowski recalls. "If you wanted to be in the band or the chorus, you had to be able to carry a tune, but not much more. If you wanted to go out for a sport, even if you weren't a great athlete, they'd figure out a place to put you."

Zimowski took advantage of the opportunities to get involved. "I was in runny extracurricular activities. I played flute in the band. I was on the swim learn. And I was a cheerleader, but that was only because I had a big mouth."

High school was also the place where Zimowski's penchant for financial management emerged. "My father had a philosophy that you always had to have money in your pocket," Zimowski recalls. "I always had some money--though never a lot--in my pocket. I was the unofficial banker for folks at school. Everyone knew that if you ever needed any money, you could borrow a buck from Joyce. The bad news was I never kept track, so my classmates still owe me hundreds of dollars. As treasurer of my senior class and probably the freshman, sophomore, and junior classes, now that I think about it--I kept closer track."

Zimowski's parents had a strong influence not only on her budding interest in financial management, but more important, on her work ethic and dedication to helping others. Zimowski's father was an insurance company manager. Her mother was trained as a nurse but, when Zimowski was young, went back to school, got an undergraduate degree in psychology and a master's degree in education, and for more than 20 years, taught child fen with learning disabilities. Zimowski, her parents, and her older sister lived on a lake and spent many pleasant days traveling in the family station wagon, often accompanying Zimowski's father on business trips to small towns in New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

A Career in Accounting

One high school class Zimowski especially liked was accounting, so that became her major in college. As she thought about careers, she decided that "public accounting sounded like a great opportunity to get in on the ground level and see what the industry was all about. And there were great career paths moving on from there." After college, Zimowski worked for the Arthur Andersen office in Rochester, a position that "gave me lots of opportunity to look at different industries," including her first exposure to the business side of health care during audits of hospitals.

Her time in public accounting also shaped Zimowski's work ethic.

"Back in those days, there were 10 or 15 of us who all graduated from college the same year, there were another 10 or 15 ahead of us, and there were 10 or 15 behind us. So this large group of people was all about the same age. There was significant camaraderie. And there was a lot of competition. Most of us were single, so we worked together, and we played together. But above all, you had a job to do, and you stayed until it was done. That meant taking work home and sitting at the kitchen table at 11:00 at night. You did it because you had deadlines, and that's the way I've approached everything in my work life: you have things to do, there are only a certain number of hours in a day, and so you have to do what it takes to meet your deadlines. In many ways, I still think about things in the context of my days in public accounting."

Still, after several years in public accounting, Zimowski found herself feeling that "there's something not very personal about financial statements," and so she looked for an opportunity that would take her beyond the numbers.

"I actually spent five months at Xerox. This was during Xerox's first ever staff reduction, so it was not a particularly good time to work there. I ran into the CFO of Park Ridge Hospital--one of my clients at Andersen. He told me he had a controller position open. That seemed like something good to do for a few years, but not something I wanted as a profession. It's been 20-plus years, and I'm still in that profession."

A Pain in the Neck

Zimowski had spent about 15 years at Park Ridge when that hospital entered into a joint venture with St. Mary's Hospital, which at the time was a Daughters of Charity--now Ascension Health-hospital in Rochester's inner city. Then the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 hit, and the two hospitals encountered tough financial times. Eventually, Ascension Health pulled out of the joint venture, and Park Ridge and St. Mary's hospitals formed Unity Health System.

But the tough financial times continued for the system, culminating in the loss of $60 million in 1999. The system went through "several painful consulting engagements" to effect a turnaround. "The experience helped us take a step back and look at the organization very differently--how we manage, what we manage--to focus strategically on running the business," Zimowski explains.